SOURCE: "Lyrical 'Rage,'" in The Saturday Review, Vol. XL, No. 45, November 9, 1957, p. 15.

In this review, Rukeyser praises In Defense of the Earth.

The fineness of Kenneth Rexroth's In Defense of Earth depends on several virtues. They are virtues which are rare in this year but which are apparent in almost every one of the Rexroth poems: a lyric-mindedness that has been prepared by many disciplines to summon up its music; a learning that eats the gifts of the world, knowing (like the laboratory baby before the food) how many cultures must be drawn on to make human fare; and that quality which has been talked about so much in speaking of Kenneth Rexroth and of those he has known in San Francisco: rage.

The poems included in the collection are the whole background of lyrics written by Kenneth Rexroth since 1949. Here is the exquisite "Great Canzon":

 … She...