Kenneth Rexroth

Kenneth Rexroth was an American poet who helped found the San Francisco Renaissance during the late 1940s. He has frequently been associated with the Beat Movement, and served as a mentor and friend to many Beat poets. Rexroth began publishing poems in magazines during the '20s, and his work frequently focused on nature, radical politics, love, and erotica. His interests expanded beyond written poetry, however. He worked in radio as a reviewer and commentator, was active in radical politics, and read his poetry in nightclubs against a backdrop of jazz. Kenneth Charles Marion Rexroth was born on December 22, 1905 in South Bend, IN. Following the death of his mother in 1916 and his father in 1918, he moved to Chicago where he lived with his aunt. He attended Chicago Art School, and worked a series of odd jobs including employment as a soda jerk. He also became interested in radical politics, and would read his poems standing on a soapbox on street corners. Rexroth was arrested and jailed in 1923-1924, allegedly for being part owner of a brothel. Rexroth traveled widely, met notable Surrealists in Paris in the mid-'20s, and eventually settled in San Francisco, which would become his home. By the late '40s, his poetry, along with his efforts to promote the work of other poets on KPFA in San Francisco, also helped build a sturdy foundation for the San Francisco Renaissance.. "...Rexroth was the leading elder poet in San Francisco in the 1950s when I arrived, and he had a program on KPFA. And he didn't review just literature. He reviewed every subject -- geology, anthropology, astronomy, philosophy -- and it seemed as he had this encyclopedic knowledge," recalled poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. While Rexroth read frequently, both as a poet in clubs and as a commentator and...