The Beat Generation
With Rexroth acting as master of ceremonies, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen read at the famous poetry-reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on October 7, 1955. Rexroth later served as a defense witness at Ginsberg's obscenity trial concerning the event. Rexroth had previously sent Ginsberg (new in the Bay Area) to meet Snyder, and was thus responsible for their friendship. Lawrence Ferlinghetti named Rexroth as one of his own mentors.
Rexroth was eventually critical of the Beat movement. Years after the Six Gallery reading, TIME magazine referred to him as "Father of the Beats." To this he replied, "an entomologist is not a bug."
Rexroth appears in Jack Kerouac's novel The Dharma Bums as the character Reinhold Cacoethes.
Read more about this topic: Kenneth Rexroth
Famous quotes containing the words beat and/or generation:
“Ah, it is sweet on the hills,
to dance in sacred faun-pelt,
to dance until one falls faint,
to beat the sacred dance-beat
until one drops down
worn out.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“Their virtues lived in their children. The family changed its persons but not its manners, and they continued a blessing to the world from generation to generation.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)