Another Beat Influence

by graham seidman

Posted to Utterances on 2001-04-16 10:34:00

Kenneth Rexroth the elder statesman of the Beats,a former popcorn machine operator, cowboy and cab driver whose poetry and prose readings on San Francisco’s radio station KPFA gave a hefty boost to the local literary ferment. Rexroth who was in his fifties and himself both a poet and a painter, interested his younger compatriots in Oriental culture through his translations of Chinese and Japanese verse. With iconocastic bravado he once announced ” I write poetry to seduce women and overthrow the capitalistc system”.