SOURCE: "Two New Books by Kenneth Rexroth," in Poetry, Vol. XC, No. 3, June 1957, pp. 180-90.

In his review of In Defense of the Earth and One Hundred Poems from the Chinese, Williams defends Rexroth's unpoetic meter and diction, and lavishly praises his translations.

The technical problem of what to do with the modern poetic line has been solved by Kenneth Rexroth by internal combustion! Whether that can be said to be activated by atomic fission or otherwise is immaterial. The line, in Rexroth's opinion, is to be kept intact no matter if it may be true, as the painters have shown, that any part of a poem (or painting) may stand for the poem if it is well made; therefore if anything at all is done with it, keeping it intact, it must give at the seams, it must spread its confinements to make more room for the...