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Poets from Indiana, Kenneth Rexroth


Yes, Mr. anti-establishment himself, Kenneth Rexroth, started his life in South Bend, Indiana, and was there until 14 when he headed off to Chicago and then bounced around for years until he ended up in San Francisco.  Yes, that same Rexroth who emceed the reading off Howl, who corresponded with Pound, Whalen, Levertov, Oppen, Synder, and others. That same Rexroth who championed the art of translation and was famously antiwar and antigovernment. Indiana. 

One of my favorite poems of his is "The Bad Old Days." You can find the entire poem on the Poetry Foundation page, but here is a taste.

The summer of nineteen eighteen   
I read The Jungle and The
Research Magnificent. That fall   
My father died and my aunt   
Took me to Chicago to live.   
The first thing I did was to take   
A streetcar to the stockyards.   
In the winter afternoon,   
Gritty and fetid, I walked
Through the filthy snow, through the   
Squalid streets, looking shyly   
Into the people’s faces,

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   
I was giddy and sick, and out   
Of my misery I felt rising   
A terrible anger and out
Of the anger, an absolute vow.   
Today the evil is clean
And prosperous, but it is   
Everywhere, you don’t have to   
Take a streetcar to find it,
And it is the same evil.
And the misery, and the
Anger, and the vow are the same.

Yes, Kenneth Rexroth went straight from Indiana into a world of poetry. 

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