The Morning Reading: Kenneth Rexroth, columnist: "Spring has come to California."

Who knew?

Poet Kenneth Rexroth wrote a column in the San Francisco Examiner for some seven years, beginning in 1960.

Imagine that. A newspaper employing a poet as a regular columnist.

The magnificent and heroic Bureau of Public Secrets has begun posting them.


Here's an excerpt from "A Night Out in the City" published in February 21, 1960:

Spring has come to California. It began at the turn of the year, when the steelhead and salmon started up the rivers seeking the shallows to lay their eggs and die. We went walking in Devil’s Gulch, between the bright green hills and the dark forest and the males were surging and fighting in the riffles over the narrow thread of eggs. My little girls stole cautiously along the bank and cried out each time they saw them. Next week was Chinese New Year. The fish were still there, but worn and tattered. In a few days they were scattered, rotting along the bank. The first blue flowers of the hound’s tongue were already out. Next week the first trillium were up. In Golden Gate Park the first almond blossoms were blooming, just as they bloomed for us last year outside our little villa near Aix-en-Provence, overlooking Cézanne’s Mont Sainte Victoire that he painted so often.

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