SOURCE: "Kenneth Rexroth and His Poetry," in The New York Times Book Review, Vol. LXXXV, No. 47, November 23, 1980, pp. 9, 43-4.

In this essay, Hall encapsulates Rexroth's career, sketching his poetic preoccupations, and speculating on his lack of critical acceptance.

In December of this year, Kenneth Rexroth will turn 75. Among his lesser accomplishments, he has appeared as a character in two famous novels: James T. Farrell put him into Studs Lonigan, a kid named Kenny who works in a drugstore; with more creative denomination, Jack Kerouac called him Rheinhold Cacoethes in The Dharma Bums, that 1958 Beat Generation testament, where he is the figure we recognize; anarchist, leader of San Francisco's literary community and poet.

For decades he has written lines like these, setting human life in a context of stone:

 Our campfire is a single light
Amongst a hundred peaks and water falls.
The manifold voices of falling water
Talk...