Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) spent his teenage years in jazz-age Chicago and hitching around the country. In 1927 he moved to San Francisco, where he played a key role in preparing the ground for the political and cultural ferments of the 1950s and 1960s. Author of more than forty volumes of poetry, essays, social criticism, and translations from seven different languages, he wryly described his main themes as “sex, mysticism, and revolution.”