-- Caroline Fraser

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The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth; Edited by Sam Hamill and Bradford Morrow; Copper Canyon Press: 768 pp., $40

Kenneth Rexroth worked to establish a West Coast identity for American poetry, one that would reflect the unique geographical, historical, cultural and ethnic qualities of the region. "I am NOT Ivy League," he once asserted, as if anyone could have ever confused his autodidactic libertarian anarchism with Ivy League elitism or New Critical detachment. He was both a populist and an intellectual, a potent combination of cultural values in the right circumstances. Rexroth also understood that regional literary identity need not, indeed must not, be provincial. His international sense of literary enterprise led him to translate from the Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish and Greek, all relevant sources for a California literary identity.

Rexroth's place in the American literary canon, like that of many other California poets, such as Robinson Jeffers, William Everson, Josephine Miles, Yvor Winters, Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer, remains open to critical debate. Consistently ignored or underrated by the Eastern literary establishment, these poets continue to exercise an active influence on West Coast writers, and they continue to be read, though largely outside the academy. Amid his huge body of published work, Rexroth left a small but enduring body of original poems, elegant translations and potent essays. He may not be quite a major poet, but he remains a significant and important one, and his combined achievements as poet, critic and translator make him one of the chief American poet-critics of his age. Scholars and critics who endeavor to discuss mid-20th century American poetry responsibly ignore him at their peril.

-- Dana Gioia

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Deep Purple, A Novel; Mayra Montero; Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman; The Ecco Press: 182 pp., $22.95

Does a solo violinist make love differently than a clarinetist or a cellist? Ask classical music critic Agustin Caban, the protagonist of "Deep Purple," Mayra Montero's viscerally erotic novel, and he would tell you they perform worlds apart in the bedroom. "[I]f she's a clarinetist, you have to be careful, very careful of her lips." Regarding a virtuosa violinist, Agustin observes that "there is no more noble service to fine music, no more imperishable support one can offer a soloist, than to throw her facedown on a bed. There they finally explode.... Cellists howl more than the others. And almost all of them tend to be wildly passionate, or too demanding."