Vitamins and Roughage

By Kenneth Rexroth 1905–1982 Kenneth Rexroth

Strong ankled, sun burned, almost naked,

The daughters of California

Educate reluctant humanists;

Drive into their skulls with tennis balls

The unhappy realization

That nature is still stronger than man.

The special Hellenic privilege

Of the special intellect seeps out

At last in this irrigated soil.

Sweat of athletes and juice of lovers

Are stronger than Socrates’ hemlock;

And the games of scrupulous Euclid

Vanish in the gymnopaedia.

Kenneth Rexroth, “Vitamins and Roughage” from The Collected Shorter Poems. Copyright © 1966 by Kenneth Rexroth. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation, www.wwnorton.com/nd/welcome.htm.

Source: The Collected Shorter Poems (1966)

Biography

Kenneth Rexroth was born in South Bend, Indiana and frequently moved around the Midwest during his childhood. He led a tumultuous life that included being orphaned at 14, constant traveling both in the US and abroad, intense political activism, and four marriages. Largely self-educated, he is one of the most well-read poets of the twentieth century. His poems, which influenced Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence . . .

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