Kenneth Rexroth

Rexroth, still a whirlwind, recently sat for a portrait.

Inscrutable, like one of the Chinese poets he likes to quote.

He also likes to quote himself, quite often, and is prone to pronouncements such as this: Our civilization is the only one in history whose major artists have rejected all its values, which is to be found in an essay on Walt Whitman in Kenneth's book, Classics Revisited (New Directions, 1965).

A good way to start the new year, looking at Rexroth and knowing there was once such a man in the world.