"The Holiness of the Real": The Short Verse of Kenneth Rexroth

Kenneth Rexroth, aka "the father of the Beats", was a major American poet from San Francisco. Though he did not achieve his much deserved recognition during his lifetime, today he is considered one of the great American poets, and his work has been ranked with that of Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, T. S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, and D. H. Lawrence. Kenneth Rexroth's short poems had never truly been analyzed and discussed in detail until Professor Donald Gutierrez shed light on them in his comprehensive work, "The Holiness of the Real": The Short Verse of Kenneth Rexroth.

Gutierrez provides readers with an introduction to Rexroth's career and standing within American literary politics, and analyzes key themes found in the poet's work. The book closes by exploring Rexroth's role as a literary and social critic-journalist. This book proves to be an extremely valuable resource in academia and for lovers of American poetry. Additionally, its release as an eBook makes it an easily accessible and approachable tool for readers.

Here is the authoritative guide to the shorter works of San Francisco poet Kenneth Rexroth - known as "the father of the Beats" - from a preeminent literary scholar. The study begins with an introduction to the poet's career and cultural position in the U.S. Gutierrez then explores key themes - nature, politics, love - and closes with an overview of Rexroth as a literary and social critic-journalist. Gutierrez's analysis remains an important resource for students and lovers of American Poetry, and this new edition will be a welcome addition to any library.

The book is divided into six chapters. The first, following a preface, is a general introduction to Rexroth, covering his career and cultural position in American society, his prosody, influences on his verse, theorizing on his poetics, and speculation about why he has been ignored by gatekeepers of the literary canon in academe and elsewhere. The next four chapters deal with significant subject categories in Rexroth's poetry: nature, political, love, and love-nature verse. The final chapter provides an overview of Rexroth as a literary and social critic-journalist, amplifying the sense of his scope as an intellect and personality. A brief conclusion follows.
Professor Donald Gutierrez, in presenting Rexroth as a major American poet, brings to bear his own artistic sensibility, his mastery of literary criticism, and his firsthand dealings with a literary lion known to have an ego as large as his intellect, who eschewed academia, championed the working class, chased women, nurtured the Beats, and revered Nature above all.

Professor Gutierrez had an intriguing personal connection to Kenneth Rexroth and the San Francisco poetry scene of the 1950s; this firsthand association, combined with sensitive scholarship and a passionate social conscience, made Professor Gutierrez eminently qualified to champion Kenneth Rexroth as a poet and personality for the ages.

"His [Rexroth's] love verse, for example, is outstanding in its purity, economy, and passion of utterance - qualities that enable it frequently to transcend simple sensual or physical expression. His nature poetry is also remarkable for its extraordinary exactitude of detail, its numinous lucidity, and, almost paradoxically, its crafted naturalness." -Donald Gutierrez on Kenneth Rexroth