Final Resting Place of Poet Kenneth Rexroth

I had read that Kenneth Rexroth's final resting place overlooked the waves of the Pacific from the hills of Santa Barbara. I am living in Los Angeles at the moment, and I imagine Kenneth had picked the place out for himself, a hill which he had camped upon and where he had written poetry. The reality is a little more prosaic, but none the less beautiful.

Rexroth is interred on the grounds of the Santa Barbara Cemetery Association. I looked up the site on the topographic map, and the gravesite is close to the edge of a bluff, about 50 feet above sea level.

There is a fence to keep people from falling off the bluff. The Bluff street parallels the bluff's edge. Rexroth's plot is near the corner of Island and Bluff, in Block C of Sunset, Plot 18, which is between the road and the fence. It is kitty-corner to a mortuary pyramid 14 or so course high.

This is the lettering from the flat headstone:

KENNETH REXROTH
22 December 1905 - 6 June 1982

As the full moon rises
The swan sings in sleep
On the lake of the mind.

Between the date line and the poem is a small image: a lotus blossom with a single tendril, perhaps?

Rexroth's headstone seems to be upside down. The name is on the south, the poem on the north. You can read it right side up standing on the road. However, where Rexroth's reclining body should be, you'll find the matching gravestones of Grace H. and Stephen S. Goodspeed.

I was greatly assisted in finding the site by the security guard on duty that day, a sergeant with the Vachon Security Company.

At the northwest foot of the hill, a lagoon called the Andree Clark Bird Refuge. I think Rexroth's first wife was named Andree.