Kenneth Rexroth Quotes

I've had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book.

Did you know I staged the first performance in America of At the Hawk's Well?

The meaning of life can be revealed but never explained.

Love is the garment of knowledge.

You don't become a saint until you lead a good life whether in Tibet or Italy or America.

The free, creative, loving people who shine so brightly in my memory of studios and coffee shops have become models for a huge section of the population. If they in turn can just stay alive in the face of power and terror, they may become the decisive section.

It takes great labor to uncover the convincing simple speech of the heart. Poetic candor comes with hard labor, so even does impetuosity and impudence.

The mature man lives quietly, does good privately, takes responsibility for his actions, treats others with friendliness and courtesy, finds mischief boring and avoids it. Without the hidden conspiracy of goodwill, society would not endure an hour.

Man thrives where angels would die of ecstasy and where pigs would die of disgust.

As Aristotle said, you have to be an aristocrat or a reactionary to write a good proletarian poem.

An entomologist is not a bug.

Bohemia is a commune in which the Revolution is over and everyone is a member of the aristocracy

The basic line in any good verse is cadenced... building it around the natural breath structures of speech.

Erotic love is one of the highest forms of contemplation.

I write for one and only one purpose, to overcome the invincible ignorance of the traduced heart. I wish to speak to and for those who have had enough of the Social Lie, the Economics of Mass Murder, the Sexual Hoax, and the Domestication of Conspicuous Consumption.

When the newspapers have got nothing else to talk about, they cut loose on the young. The young are always news. If they are up to something, that's news. If they aren't, that's news too.

Against the ruin of the world, there is only one defense: the creative act.

Crooked cards and straight whiskey, Slow horses and fast women.

Art is the reasoned derangement of the senses.

Maturity is having the ability to escape categorization.

A white crowned night sparrow sings as the moon sets. Thunder growls far off. Our campfire is a single light. Amongst a hundred peaks and waterfalls. The manifold voices of falling water Take all night. Wrapped in your down bag Starlight on you cheeks and eyelids Your breath comes and goes In a tiny cloud in the frosty night. Ten thousand birds sing in the sunrise. Ten thousand years revolve without change. All this will never be again.

I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.