Kenneth Rexroth (Indiana, 1905 - Santa Barbara, California, 1982) was an American writer, poet and artist who is regarded as one of the forerunners of the American counterculture. His career links the bohemian scene of the 1920s with the literary movement that emerged in San Francisco after the Second World War.
Raised in a family of abolitionists, socialists, anarchists and freethinkers, he was orphaned at the age of twelve. He was largely self-taught: he attended school for only five years, but read voraciously, wrote poetry, painted abstract pictures, worked in avant-garde theatre and taught himself several languages. As a young man in Chicago he mixed with musicians, artists and radicals in the bohemian world, and before he turned twenty he had already hitchhiked across the country and worked as a cowboy cook, farm hand and logger. These experiences are recorded in his autobiography, a book that portrays the radical libertarian subculture of early twentieth-century America.
In 1927 he settled in San Francisco, a city he liked for its proximity to the western mountains and its atmosphere far from puritanism. During the 1930s and 1940s he took an active part in libertarian groups and the defence of civil rights, and he declared himself a conscientious objector during the war. He was also the main driving force behind the cultural ferment that led to the San Francisco Renaissance. In the following decades he wrote poetry, plays, essays and social criticism, translated poetry from seven languages and pioneered poetry readings accompanied by jazz. In 1968 he moved to Santa Barbara, where he taught courses on poetry and underground music and lived until his death, apart from long stays in Japan.
His legacy can be seen in Beat poetry and in the connection between literature, music and political dissent that marked the counterculture of the 1960s. His translations of Japanese and Chinese poetry, and his autobiography, remain in print.