Author. He was an American avant-garde author and poet. Starting in the 1940s, his cultural movement helped promote the San Francisco Renaissance, which became a culturally "happening place." His apartment became a Friday night literary salon. Although he did not want to be listed among these authors, he authorized his name to be used on October 7, 1955 at a literary sensational poetry reading, which became known as the "Six Gallery," introducing the idea of the "Beat Generation." He became a forerunner of the free-thinking culture, which became known as the Flower Children of the 1960s. Becoming an orphan at the age of fourteen, he moved to Chicago to live with an aunt. His mother had home schooled him. Although he was expelled from high school, he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago as a teenager, before hitchhiking around the United States, being employed at various jobs. He self-educated himself by reading, and teaching himself several languages including French and Chinese. He became a champion of anti-establishment literature. He traveled to Paris, meeting avant-garde artists, before moving to California permanently. After living in San Francisco for 41 years, he relocated to Santa Barbara in 1968, becoming a teacher at the University of California at Santa Barbara. During World War I, he was involved with the anarchism movement. During World War II, he was a conscientious objector. His tumultuous personal life became very public: In 1927, he married an artist, Andrée Dutche, but by 1940 the coupled divorced and shortly after on October 17, 1940, she suddenly died from an epileptic seizure. This triggered a depressing period in his life, impacting his poetry, which was written in honor of Dutche. In 1941 he married Marie Kass but the couple were separated by 1948, yet remained friends the rest of his life. After traveling to France with Marthe Larsen, he married her there; eventually the couple had two daughters after returning to California in December of 1949; and he divorced his second wife in 1955. At this point, Larsen left him. After moving to Santa Barbara, he married his long-time assistant Carol Tinker in 1968. In 1964 he was given an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1974, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study in Japan, and in 1975 he received the Copernicus Award from the Academy of American Poets in recognition of a poet's lifetime work and contribution to poetry as a cultural force. In 1977 he received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He was a regular contributor to a variety of newspapers including the "San Francisco Chronicle," "Saturday Review," and the "New York Times." In 1940 Rexroth's first collection of poetry, "In What Hour," was published, articulating his political convictions as well as his view of nature. In 1944 another collection, "The Phoenix and the Tortoise," supported his convictions of having a radical leftist political viewpoint, a strong anti-war sentiment and being a conscientious objector during World War II. He was opposed to the thousands of Japanese Americans being confined by the government in concentration camps, stating this act was unconstitutional and racist. He addressed this subject in his autobiography. A collection of his translations of Japanese poetry, "100 Poems from the Japanese" was published in 1955. "One Hundred Poems from the Chinese" is a collection of his translations of Chinese poetry, which was published in 1956. His greatest contribution to American poetry could be giving an Asian influence to his poetry and a superb translation of Asian literature to English. In December of 1980, Rexroth suffered a heart attack, becoming a cardiac invalid for several months. Before his death from a more-massive second heart attack, he converted to the Roman Catholic faith.