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The modern sensibility attempts to drain the contents of experience; these Greek poets strive to state the fact so poignantly that it becomes an ever-flowing spring - as Sappho says, 'More real than real, more gold than gold.'
Kenneth Rexroth -
All night I lay awake beside you, Leaning on my elbow, watching your Sleeping face, that face whose purity Never ceases to astonish me.
Kenneth Rexroth
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Don Quixote, The Tale of Genji, The Dream of the Red Chamber, the Satyricon, these are the world's major works of prose fiction.
Kenneth Rexroth -
It takes great labor to uncover the convincing simple speech of the heart. Poetic candor comes with hard labor, so even does impetuosity and impudence.
Kenneth Rexroth -
In America we have nothing that takes the place of the gods and goddesses and heroes and demigods of the ancient world. There is nothing to connect us with the soil. We have no mythology. It has never been possible to construct one.
Kenneth Rexroth -
It is a commonplace that Racine is untranslatable. This is not because his verse is difficult, but because it is not.
Kenneth Rexroth -
When the newspapers have got nothing else to talk about, they cut loose on the young. The young are always news. If they are up to something, that's news. If they aren't, that's news too.
Kenneth Rexroth -
Victorian society was homogeneous without being homogenized. It was, to paraphrase the epigram about Parliament, a society of extreme eccentrics who agreed so well that they could afford to differ.
Kenneth Rexroth