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)
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
“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. .
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.”