Harlan Steinberger

Arguably one of the most talented and respected artists of his generation, Kenneth Rexroth was not only a venerated poet, but an essayist, literary critic, translator and painter. Perhaps most significantly, Rexroth was considered the instigator of The San Francisco Renaissance.

“The Signature of All Things” serves as a passionate ode to the artist, documenting a magical night of tribute to the genius of Kenneth Rexroth on the 100th anniversary of his birth. Held at Beyond Baroque, the notoriously avant-garde Literary Arts Center in Venice Beach, this standing-room-only celebration attracted an eclectic and eccentric roster of participants extolling Rexroth’s impact on an art form.

By turns exuberant and bitter-sweet, this film memorializes Rexroth with wild recitations and wry reminiscences from the assorted friends, family members, former students, writers, music archivists, performers and poets who knew him best. This documentary expresses, in its unassuming artistry, a lasting impression of an American original.

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JOHN ROGERS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Poetry readings have always been a blast for S.A. Griffin, but the tour that the venerable Los Angeles poet plans this spring may be his most explosive.

This time the author of such collections as “Unborn Again” and “One Long Naked Dance” will be packing his poems inside of a Cold War-era bomb and taking them on the road. The idea is to create the constructive from the destructive.

“I’m taking one of the most iconic images of destruction of the 20th century and turning it into something positive,” says the strapping Griffin, who at 6-foot-3 is nonetheless dwarfed by the gun-metal gray performance-art companion that rises more than 7 feet tall when tilted on end. He found the dummy bomb, which contains no explosives, on the Internet and bought it for $100.

His plan: bring the bomb to a city near you, dropping rhymes and free verse by the hundreds on audiences everywhere from Atlanta to Montana, Oregon to North Carolina and points in between. His aim is to get people to wake up to poetry.

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