Kenneth Rexroth: Likeness

“I said, "I have an extremely wide repertory. What would you like — sex, revolution, or mysticism?" She looked up and said quietly, "What’s the difference?"”

Kenneth Rexroth

"The Libertarian Circle"
An Autobiographical Novel (1991)
Context: I was giving a reading at some university. Down in the front row of the auditorium was a young lady in a leather microskirt and a leather microbolero, tied with a leather bootlace, and nothing else whatever. I said, "I have an extremely wide repertory. What would you like — sex, revolution, or mysticism?" She looked up and said quietly, "What’s the difference?"

Sex

“She was almost the perfectly typical passionate, revolutionary, intellectual woman — a frailer, even more highly strung Rosa Luxemburg. … She made up her own revolution out of her vitals, like a spider or silkworm.”

Kenneth Rexroth

"Simone Weil" in The Nation (12 January 1957) http://www.cddc.vt.edu/bps/rexroth/essays/simone-weil.htm
Context: Simone Weil was one of the most remarkable women of the twentieth, or indeed of any other century. I have great sympathy for her, but sympathy is not necessarily congeniality. It would be easier to write of her if I liked what she had to say, which I strongly do not. …I think Simone Weil had both over- and under-equipped herself for the crisis which overwhelmed her — along, we forget, immersed in her tragedy, with all the rest of us. She was almost the perfectly typical passionate, revolutionary, intellectual woman — a frailer, even more highly strung Rosa Luxemburg. … She made up her own revolution out of her vitals, like a spider or silkworm. She could introject all the ill of the world into her own heart, but she could not project herself in sympathy to others. Her letters read like the more distraught signals of John of the Cross in the dark night.

Passion

“In the star-filled dark we cook
Our macaroni and eat
By lantern light. Stars cluster
Around our table like fireflies.”

Kenneth Rexroth

In Defense of the Earth (1956), The Great Nebula of Andromeda

Star , Light , Cooking

“The characteristic paranoias of youth — the attribution of intention and duplicity to almost all human behavior. The young suffer terribly from the belief that the people they encounter are most of them up to something and that something has some relation to themselves. Actually, of course, most people just bobble along like apples in a stream. Usually it takes many years of experience to realize this.”

Kenneth Rexroth

Charles Dickens: The Pickwick Papers (p. 102)
More Classics Revisited (1989)

People , Youth , Behavior , Suffering

“With my own group I like to keep it loose. They have to counter rather than go with me. When they stop I like to be moving.”

Kenneth Rexroth

Referring to the jazz musicians who performed along with his readings
Rothenberg and Antin interview (1958)