Kenneth Rexroth: February 23, 1965

Click here to listen to this audio file

The Poetry Center presents Kenneth Rexroth, reading translations as well his own selected works.

Originally Recorded By
APA
Location
San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco
Date
2/23/1965
Total Run Time
01:06:52
Rights
©© American Poetry Archives. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. For all other uses please email poetry@sfsu.edu
Views
3222
Downloads
533
  • Kenneth Rexroth remarks on what he will read (00:03)
  • Remarks on his translations of Pierre Reverdy's poems and gives a short background on Reverdy (01:36)
  • Remarks on his interests in a creativity seen in the comparison of Reverdy's "radical dissociation and reconstruction" to Surrealism's "free association"; he also remarks on "visonary experience" and a sense of "transport" and "subliminal experience" he sees in Reverdy's poems and his own (03:16)
  • Remarks on Stephane Mallarme's poetry, specifically "Un coup de des," as a source of this creativity and as an influence on his own poetry (10:05)
  • Remarks on Walter Conrad Arensberg and Gertrude Stein as other contemporary followers of this sense of creativity (13:42)
  • Introduces his long poem "A Prolegomenon to a Theodicy" (14:51)
  • from "A Prolegomenon to a Theodicy" (15:06)
  • Remarks on a section of the poem he will read, which Louis Zukofsky called a "nominative chant" (19:48)
  • Continues from "A Prolegomenon to a Theodicy" (20:04)
  • Remarks on repetition and recontextualization in his own poetry (21:34)
  • Remarks on narrative examples of the "dissociation and recombination" strategy (22:05)
  • Continues from "A Prolegomenon to a Theodicy" (23:17)
  • Remarks on "Phronesis" (26:40)
  • "Phronesis" (26:59)
  • Sound cuts out (30:45)
  • Continues "Phronesis" (30:51)
  • Remarks on "Phronesis" (31:09)
  • Continues "Phronesis" (31:27)
  • Remarks that he will now read his translations of Reverdy (33:33)
  • "Miracle" {Pierre Reverdy} (33:37)
  • "A Ringing Bell" {Pierre Reverdy} (34:08)
  • "I Keep Everything" {Pierre Reverdy} (34:38)
  • "Rainbow" {Pierre Reverdy} (35:47)
  • Remarks on the "idiom of a popular song" in Reverdy's "Perspective" (36:17)
  • "Perspective" {Pierre Reverdy} (36:41)
  • Remarks on work written to accompany Ornette Coleman's music, "Eight for Ornette's Music" (37:19)
  • "Eight for Ornette's Music" (38:31)
  • "Took" (42:13)
  • Asks if there are any questions (43:40)
  • Audience member asks if he has written or will read any new "American-type" poems (44:14)
  • Audience member asks if Rexroth would explicate Analytical Cubism as seen in the poetry he has read; also asks if he will explicate such with a poem (44:40)
  • Rexroth remarks that he will not explicate using a poem, as he feels to do so is to "destroy poetry" (45:07)
  • Offers a history of Analytical Cubism as seen in paintings and defines it as the "analysis of reality of the picture subject into components of a kind of irreducible character" (45:26)
  • Remarks on Cubist poetry and how his own translations of Reverdy are more "modernistical" than Reverdy's own poems (48:56)
  • Audience member asks if Rexroth might talk more about Reverdy (51:05)
  • Rexroth offers a short bio on Reverdy (51:10)
  • Audience member discusses the structure and formal basis of Rexroth's poems and translations and asks Rexroth if he would ever write in stanzas (53:38)
  • Rexroth comments on the non-issue of such a question (55:44)
  • "Another Spring" (57:52)
  • Remarks on Paestum in Italy (59:09)
  • "Golden Section" (59:52)
  • Audience member asks Rexroth if he has his book of Chinese translations with him (1:03:22)
  • Rexroth responds that he does not but will read something more recent (1:03:33)
  • Remarks on "This Night Only" (1:03:41)
  • "This Night Only" (1:03:57)
  • "An Easy Song" (1:05:03)

Related Items

Kenneth Rexroth: October 5, 1959 Philip Whalen: December 12, 1956 Kenneth Patchen: December 6, 1957 Kenneth Rexroth: July 13, 1955 Robin Blaser: March 9, 1967 David Melnick: April 23, 1984 Diane di Prima: April 24, 1968 Theodore Roethke: February 25, 1954 Philip Whalen: September 14, 1965 Reading at Six Gallery Re-Creation: March 11, 1956 Louis Zukofsky: July 2, 1958 "Poetry Center" from the "1962 Franciscan" yearbook (page 48) Allen Ginsberg: April 27, 1959 Lew Welch: November 9, 1959 John Yau and Andrew Joron: October 15, 2020 Gary Snyder: November 24, 1958 Philip Whalen: March 11, 1968 Joanne Kyger and David Meltzer: October 23, 1968 Muriel Rukeyser: July 16, 1958 Pierre Joris on Paul Celan: March 18, 2015