The Collected Longer PoemsNew Directions Publishing, 1968 - 307 pages This is a companion volume to the Collected Shorter Poems of Kenneth Rexroth which was published in 1967. All of the long poems written over the past forty years are included: The Homestead Called Damascus (1920-25), A Prolegomenon to a Theodicy (1925-27), The Phoenix and the Tortoise (1940-44), The Dragon and the Unicorn (1944-50) and The Heart's Garden, The Garden's Heart (1967-68). As we read the long poems together and in sequence we can see that Rexroth is a philosophical poet of consequence who offers us a comprehensive system of values based on the realization of the ethical mysticism of universal responsibility. He is concerned, above all, with process: the movement from the Dual to the Other. "I have tried," Rexroth writes," to embody in verse the belief that the only valid conservation of value lies in the assumption of unlimited liability, the supernatural identification of the self with the tragic unity of creative process. I hope I have made it clear that the self does not do this by an act of will, by sheer assertion. He who would save his life must lose it." |
Contents
A Prolegomenon to a Theodicy 19251927 | 37 |
The Phoenix and the Tortoise 19401944 | 61 |
The Dragon and the Unicorn 19441950 | 93 |
The Hearts Garden The Gardens Heart 1967 | 281 |
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American appetite Autumn beautiful Bernadette Mayer birds blue bright calvados Chidori church Click clack click climbing clouds cold color comes Contemplation Cro-Magnons cross Damascus dark dawn dead deep dragon dream drink evil eyes face fall fire flesh France garden girls gold gravel green grey hand heart heaven hills Italy Kannon Kenneth Rexroth Labor power Langue d'Oc leaves light live look lover Luca Pacioli macabeu Marichi mist Monbazillac moon morning mountains move mystic Naples never night once pachinko painting pale past perfume person Philosopher says Pyrenees rain river rocks Romanesque Romilly Street Sebastian Selected Poems shadow singing sleep smoke snow song stars stone streets Tammuz temple things Thomas thousand Thuribles trees turn twilight vision walk watch waterfall Wenlock Edge whores Wilhelm Reich wind wine women yellow