REXROTH

The Rexroths owned a summer cabin a few ravines over from us. After school, I used to ride my red mare by his place near Dead Man's Curve on the way to the Inkwells. I remember the wooden sign, a fence plank with Rexroth painted in big black letters, rotting into the hillside. Tanoak and redwood duff. His wife used to sit in the same pew as my grandmother at St. Cecelia's Church in Lagunitas. The morning sun lit them as if from within. Sometimes my grandfather would run into him hiking up Devil's Gulch. They talked of salmon runs and politics. He religiously clipped Rexroth's newspaper columns with curved nail scissors. I remember reading the yelllowed columns as a child. No idea of him as the poet. Or me either.



Read Sam Hamill's amazing memoir on Rexroth

http://lostangelesca.tumblr.com/post/14040873919/poet-sam-hamill-on-meeting-kenneth-rexroth-as-a-young