Kenneth Patchen


(Soundtrack Chet Baker – Speak Low )

Part I (Greenich Village – 1960)

Kenneth Patchen December 13, 1911
Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972) was a major American experimental poet and novelist influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism.

His poems (Poem hunter)

Kennethpatchen

Yes, I went to the city,
And there I did bitterly cry,
Men out of touch with the earth,
And with never a glance at the sky

Kenneth Patchen — Poetry and Jazz days, 1957–1959 Larry Smith

His black & white illustration

Picture Poetry Calendar

broadside_patchen

  • “There are so many little dyings that it does not matter which of them is death” Kenneth Patchen

    “I am the world-crier and this is my dangerous career…I am the one to call your bluff, and this is my climate…”
    Can you listen to an honest man? Are you strong enough?” Kenneth Patchen

  • For Kenneth Patchen by Alan Sondheim
    when christ spoke on the mount
    the winds were terrible
    people couldn’t see ‘im
    quite a distance, they said, later
    quite a distance
    and the winds and the clouds
    the storms, too, the weather was furious
    so they wrote what they thought they heard
    and spoke what they thought they saw
    and chances were pretty good
    that he wasn’t there at all

    Alan Sondheim via Netbehaviour Dec 13 2010

    He was an early and continuing influence; I showed my
    work at the Gotham Bookmart Gallery in New York right after his show in
    the late 60s I think. An amazing writer; I used to have his records.
    Between him and Lenny Bruce, my life was made. .

    Henry Miller on Patchen

    THE first thing one would remark on meeting Kenneth Patchen is that he is the living symbol of protest. I remember distinctly my first impression of him when we met in New York: it was that of a powerful, sensitive being who moved on velvet pads. A sort of sincere assassin, I thought to myself, as we shook hands. This impression has never left me. True or not, I feel that it would give him supreme joy to destroy with his own hands all the tyrants and sadists of this earth together with the art, the institutions and all the machinery of every day life which sustain and glorify them. He is a fizzing human bomb ever threatening to explode in our midst. Tender and ruthless at the same time, he has the faculty of estranging the very ones who wish to help him. He is inexorable: he has no manners, no tact, no grace. He gives no quarter. Like the gangster, he follows a code of his own. He gives you the chance to put up your hands before shooting you down. Most people however, are too terrified to throw up their hands. They get mowed down.

    Miriam Patchen (thanks to Albert Geiser for this link)

    For 15 years, Mrs. Patchen, the widow of the renowned poet Kenneth Patchen was a familiar rush- hour figure most Tuesday evenings on the corner of El Camino Real and Embarcadero in Palo Alto, where she rallied with other protesters against U.S. military interventions, waving placards that urged passing motorists to “honk for peace.”