Perhaps the finest love poet of the the 20th century and also a skilled poet of the natural world, capable of evoking extremely vivid images with what seems like the simplest language, Rexroth is too often remembered more for his role in founding the San Francisco Poetry Center and his support of many of the "Beat" poets (which earned him the title "father of the beat generation", a title he repeatedly rejected) than for his own poetry. Copper Canyon publisher (and poet) Sam Hamill and poet Bradford Morrow have undertaken to right this injustice by presenting this defintive volume of Rexroth's complete poems. While this edition does not include Rexroth's remarkable translations from Japanese, Chinese and other languages, it does collect all of his other published poems and a selection from his earliest unpublished poetry. A must-buy for any lover of 20th century poetry in English. ( )