Kenneth Rexroth was a poet and a co-founder of the San Francisco Poetry Center. Born in 1905 in South Bend, Indiana, he was educated mainly by his parents. As a young man he was a wanderer who sometimes worked as a casual labourer. Later on he became a political radical, and associated with various leftist and avant-garde movements. His work was closely associated with The Beat Generation of the 1950s. He was San Francisco correspondent of The Nation from 1953 to 1968, and a columnist of San Francisco Examiner from 1960 to 1968.
Apart from writing poetry, Kenneth Rexroth was also known as a painter. As a literary translator he rendered into English poetry written in French, Spanish, and Greek. He is well known for his translations of classical and modern Chinese and Japanese poetry. He co-translated with Chung Ling works of Chinese women poets, which are published in Orchid Boat: Woman Poets of China. He died in 1982.
It is a well known fact that the Anglo-American new poetics of the first half of the 20th century drew upon translations from Asia as an important source of inspiration. Rexroth’s interest in Chinese and Japanese poetry is therefore very much part of the modern American poetic tradition.
主要作品
Major Publications:
Poems from the Greek Anthology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.
sacramental Acts: the Love Poems of Kenneth Rexroth. Port Townsend, Wash.: Copper Canyon Press, 1997.
Love Poems from the Japanese. Boston: Shambhala, 1994.
Flower Wreath Hill: Later Poems. New York: New Directions, 1991.
Thirty-six Poems. New York: Peter Blum Edition, 1987.
World Outside the Window: the Selected Essays of Kenneth Rexroth. New York: New Directions, 1987.
Between Two Wars: Selected Poems Written Prior to the Second World War. Athens, Ohio: Labyrinth Editions ; San Francisco, Calif.: Iris Press, 1982.
Li Ch’ing-chao: Complete Poems. New York: New Directions, 1979.
The Morning Star. New York: New Directions, 1979.
The Burning Heart: Women Poets of Japan. New York: Seabury Press, 1977.
On Flower Wreath Hill. Burnaby, B.C.: Blackfish Press, 1976.
One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese. New York: New Directions, 1976.
The Silver Swan: Poems Written in Kyoto, 1974-75. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1976.
Communalism: From Its Origins to the Twentieth Century. New York: Seabury Press, 1974.
New Poems. New York: New Directions, 1974.
Selected poems of Pierre Reverdy: a bilingual edition. London : Cape, 1973.
The Elastic Retort; Essays in Literature and Ideas. New York: Seabury Press, 1973.
Lovers Who Feed the Goldfish in the Fontaine de Medicis Will Always Be True to One Another. Cambridge, Mass.: Pomegranate Press, 1972.
Orchid Boat: Women Poets of China. New York: New Directions, 1972, 1982.
American Poetry in the Twentieth Century. New York: Herder and Herder, 1971.
One Hundred Poems from the Chinese. New York: New Directions, 1971.
Sky, Sea, Birds, Trees, Earth, House, Beasts, Flowers. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Unicorn Press, 1971.
Love and the Turning Year; One Hundred More Poems from the Chinese. New York: New Directions, 1970.
The Alternative Society; Essays from the Other World. New York: Herder and Herder, 1970.
With Eye and Ear. New York: Herder and Herder, 1970.
Classics Revisited. Chicago: quadrangle Books, 1968.
The Collected Longer Poems. New York: New Directions, 1968.
The Spark in the tinder on Knowing. Cambridge, Mass.: Pym-Randall Press, 1968.
The Heart’s Garden, the Garden’s Heart. Cambridge, Mass.: Pym-Randall Press, 1967.
An autobiographical Novel. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966.
The Collected Shorter Poems. New York: New Directions, 1966.
Natural Numbers; New and Selected Poems. Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1963.
The Homestead Called Damascus. New York: New Directions, 1963.
Bird in the Bush. New York: New Directions, 1959.
In Defence of the Earth. London; New York: Hutchinson, 1956, 1959.
Thirty Spanish Poems of Love and Exile. San Francisco: City Lights Pocket bookshop, 1956.
The Art of Worldly Wisdom. Sausalito, Calif.: Golden Goose Press, 1953.
The Dragon and the Unicorn. Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1952.
Beyond the Mountains. New York: New Directions, 1951.
The Signature of All Things; Poems, Songs, Elegies, Translations, and Epigrams. New York: New Directions, 1950.
The New British Poets, an Anthology. Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1949.
The Phoenix and the Tortoise. Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1944.
In What Hour. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1940.
