Rexroth's poetry. This significant other appears
with him in "Air and Angels"… in "one
forever…infinite…so vast" and as sage in "on
what planet". The first poem itself becoming a
valediction against time and death, the second an
example of mystical love. The spirit animal
appears in "The Crisis" …" the guillotine animal
flies over the drowned lands", taking on the
spectre of death. Rexroth's poetry is, at times, not
entirely shamanic but pining for shamanic truth
in the world, "a passionate call for prophetic
vision".
To Rexroth, the poet must be a cipherer, a
kabbalist of reality, a decoder, almost shamanic in
his quest for spiritual realisation. In Rexroth's
writing, this is the universal responsibility of the
shaman-poet. Furthermore, he summons the lone
spirit of the shaman-poet when he states "against
the ruin of the world, there is only one defence-
the creative act" (Reisman, 2012). In the poem
“Andromeda chained to the rock the great nebula
in her heart” which holds a relationship with
modernist writers such as Stein and Zukofsky and
shares an affinity with African and Native
44