Kenneth Rexroth (1905 - 1982)

Fri Dec 22, 1905

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Kenneth Rexroth was an American poet, anarchist, and Wobbly born on this day in 1905. Although he did not consider himself to be a Beat poet, and disliked the association, he was dubbed the “Father of the Beats” by Time magazine.

Rexroth was born in Indianna to a family familiar with radical politics; his dad used to drink with Eugene V. Debs. Rexroth was almost completely self-educated, with only five years of formal schooling, and taught himself several languages. He became skeptical of the Soviet Union after the failed Kronstadt rebellion in 1921, which solidified his anarchist leanings.

Here is a poem composed by Rexroth on the subject of anarchists Bartomeleo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco who were executed by the state:

"I saw you both marching in an army

You with the red and black flag, Sacco with the

rattlesnake banner.

I kicked steps up the last snow bank and came

To the indescribably blue and fragrant

Polemonium and the dead sky and the sterile

Crystalline granite and final monolith of the summit.

These are the things that will last a long time,

Vanzetti,

I am glad that once on your day I have stood among them.

Some day mountains will be named after you and Sacco.

They will be here and your name with them,

When these days are but a dim remembering of the time

When man was wolf to man.

I think men will be remembering you a long time

Standing on the mountains

Many men, a long time, comrade."