In Defence of the Earth (1959, first edition)
A book of verse from Kenneth Rexroth from the San Francisco Renaissance
Author
Publisher
Printing Details
First UK edition, first printing. Hardback in dustwrapper. 22 × 14cm, 107pp.
Not signed but with a publisher's review slip loosely inserted, and a despatch note from a European literary journal (De Periscoop) sending this and another book for a potential review. The books were sent to Hugo can de Perre, a Belgian journalist who had worked with the Resistance in the early years of the Second World War, escaped (via Spain) to England, where he worked for the BBC World Service among others. It was at the BBC that he met his future wife, Selma Velleman, who had been a member of the Dutch resistance and had survived Ravensbruck concentration camp.
An important book in the San Francisco Renaissance, the term coined to describe the avant-garde movement in American poetry in the 1950s. Rexroth was called the "Father of the Beats [Beat poets]" (a title he rejected). The poems are superb, balancing his deep, restorative love for the natural world against his apocalyptic rage toward modern industrial society, his anger is palpable in "Thou Shalt not Kill", an elegy for the poet Dylan Thomas, as Rexroth directly accuses the commercial, academic, and bourgeois world of slowly draining the life out of true creative souls...
Condition
The book is in very good condition, with a slightly musty odour but with clean pages and secure binding. The dustwrapper is tanned to the spine but has not been price-clipped and is now within a protective sleeve.
Books are currently zero-rated for duty (as of May 2026), so the price shown is the price you pay.
Price
£35.00
