SOURCE: "Kenneth Rexroth, Poet," in The Ohio Review, Vol. XVII, No. 2, Winter 1976, pp. 54-67.

This wide-ranging essay spans Rexroth's career, but concentrates on The Phoenix and the Tortoise as an exemplary 20th century work.

Many readers have difficulty in disengaging Rexroth as poet from Rexroth as social critic, Rexroth as man of letters, Rexroth as poetic warrior carrying on a vendetta with those who do not see the world of poetry as he does. One distinguished writer remarked scornfully in my presence that he did not consider Rexroth a poet but a politician. In the interests of dinner table decorum I didn't bother to press him to a clearer definition, but the remark was so pejorative in tone that it was hardly necessary. Now the poetic community has before it the Collected Shorter Poems and the Collected Longer Poems from New Directions, and the matter is there to...