Strolling across the University of California, Santa Barbara campus one afternoon, poet and professor Kenneth Rexroth saw one of his students lying on the grass. “What are you doing?,” he asked. “Oh, I’m reading a book of poetry,” the student replied. “How can you be reading poetry?” Rexroth queried. “I don’t hear anything.”
Quoted from Mira Rosenthal’s “The Self Made Strange: On Translating Tomasz Różycki’s ‘Iterations',” Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets (Southern Illinois U. Press, 2010), edited by Blas Falconer, Beth Martinelli, and Helena Mesa.
Showing posts with label Kenneth Rexroth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kenneth Rexroth. Show all posts
nobly disheveled
Any bright young man can be taught to be artful. It is impossible to teach taste, but you can teach most anybody caution. It is always the lesser artists who are artful, they must learn their trade by rote. They must be careful never to make false steps, never to speak out of a carefully synthesized character. The greatest poetry is nobly disheveled. At least it never shows the scars of taking care.
—Kenneth Rexroth, introduction to Selected Poems of D.H. Lawrence
—Kenneth Rexroth, introduction to Selected Poems of D.H. Lawrence
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