Teaching
Rexroth was a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 1968 to 1973. He became famous among students—and infamous with the administration—for his witty and inflammatory remarks on trends of anti-intellectualism and laziness on campus.
His classes were quite popular amongst his students, and they usually began with him expounding good-naturedly on whatever subject took his fancy at the time, Rexroth taking the mantle of favored Uncle to a collection of appreciative "nieces and nephews". Students were encouraged to write their own poetry and then recite it. One incident during his class was fairly explosive, however. A male student started to recite his own work, a jumbled, jokey misogynistic piece exulting in violence towards women. Rexroth stopped the reading, mid-stream, angrily eviscerated the student to the astonishment of others in the class, and banished the offender from ever setting foot in his class again. Such was Rexroth's respect and dedication to the idea of transcendental love between a man and a woman.
Read more about this topic: Kenneth Rexroth
Famous quotes containing the word teaching:
“Whatever I may be, I want to be elsewhere than on paper. My art and my industry have been employed in making myself good for something; my studies, in teaching me to do, not to write. I have put all my efforts into forming my life. That is my trade and my work.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“I have come to believe ... that the stage may do more than teach, that much of our current moral instruction will not endure the test of being cast into a lifelike mold, and when presented in dramatic form will reveal itself as platitudinous and effete. That which may have sounded like righteous teaching when it was remote and wordy will be challenged afresh when it is obliged to simulate life itself.”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)
“Give me the splendid silent sun
with all his beams full-dazzling,
Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,
Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows,
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape,
Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching content,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)