BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS


 

 

The Relevance of Rexroth

by Ken Knabb

88 pages. 1990. Reprinted in Public Secrets (1997)

[How To Order]

 

Chapter 1: Life and Literature
Brief biography. What he was like in person. His poetry. Opposition to Pound, Eliot, and academia. Remarkable variety and liveliness of his essays. Views on Blake, Baudelaire, Whitman, Henry Miller, etc.

Chapter 2: Magnanimity and Mysticism
Magnanimity as central theme of his life and works. Mystical experiences. Views on Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, psychedelics, pseudosciences, D.H. Lawrence, Martin Buber, etc.

Chapter 3: Society and Revolution
His opposition to Bolshevism. His anarchist perspectives and activities. Views on the Beats, the sixties counterculture, ecology, underground songs, etc. Ambiguity of his position as public social critic. Limits of his social analyses and of his notion of cultural subversion.

Notes and Bibliography


[REXROTH ARCHIVE]