Rexroth Poems
This is just a small sampling of my favorite Rexroth poems. If you enjoy them, please
treat yourself to the various collections published by New Directions, or
better yet to the Complete Poems
(Copper Canyon Press).
The date following each poem is the first known publication date. When two dates are given, the earlier one is the probable date of composition. Notes and copyright information are at the bottom of each page.
Rexroth’s Prefaces to His Volumes of Poetry
1920s
The Thin Edge of Your Pride
From The Homestead Called Damascus
From A Prolegomenon to a Theodicy
1930s
Another Early Morning Exercise
From the Paris Commune to the Kronstadt Rebellion
Requiem for the Spanish Dead
On What Planet
Climbing Milestone Mountain
Autumn in California
August 22, 1939
1940s
Between Two Wars
Again at Waldheim
Delia Rexroth
Andrée Rexroth
When We With Sappho
Floating
The Advantages of Learning
Inversely, as the Square of Their Distances Apart
A Letter to William Carlos Williams
The Signature of All Things
1940s (long poems)
From The Phoenix and the Tortoise
From The Dragon
and the Unicorn
1950s
For Eli Jacobson
Thou Shalt Not Kill
From A Bestiary
Quietly
The Bad Old Days
Portrait of the Author as a Young Anarchist
They Say This Isn’t a Poem
Codicil
Noretorp-Noretsyh
Fish Peddler and Cobbler
Homer in Basic
1960s
Two Jazz Poems
This Night Only
The Wheel Revolves
Venice
Travelers in Erewhon
Oaxaca 1925
From The Heart’s Garden, The Garden’s Heart
1970s
From The Silver Swan
From The Love Poems of Marichiko
From On Flower Wreath Hill
As the full moon rises . . .
All these Rexroth poems are copyright 2003 by Copper Canyon Press. Reproduced by permission of Copper Canyon Press and New Directions Publishing Corp.