Kenneth Patchen

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Kenneth Patchen
Born December 13, 1911
Died January 8, 1972

Kenneth Patchen (December 13, 1911 – January 8, 1972) was an American poet and painter. Though he denied any direct connection, Patchen's work and ideas regarding the role of artists paralleled those of the Dadaists and Surrealists. Patchen also foreshadowed literary and art forms ranging from reading poetry to jazz accompanyment to writing the kind of poetry and prose identified as Beat by people somewhat younger to experiments with the oblique approaches to language found in several wings of post modernism to creating anticedents of concrete and visual poetry. The works he called picture poems, and did during the nearly bed-ridden last years of his life, seem to be his final attempt at artistic synthesis. However significant his sources may have been, many would see his legacy as more important, and that legacy continues to grow long after his death.

Contents

[edit] Life

Patchen was born in Niles, Ohio. He attended Alexander Meiklejohn's Experimental College for one year, and then the University of Wisconsin. As a poor boy, he worked in factories and played football in high school.

He fell in love with Miriam Oikemus, to whom he sent so many love poems that she believed he was unemployed. They married, and he dedicated all of his books to her. For much of his life Patchen suffered from a spinal injury that caused him an extreme amount of pain. The situation was made worse when corrective surgery left him housebound and virtually bed-ridden.

In the final years of his life only two people were permitted to visit the Patchens, his dentist and the poet Franz Douskey who made frequent trips from Tucson. Another occasional visitor was the writer Al Young. This caused Lawrence Ferlinghetti to write in The Outsider, that "..someone was sitting on Kenneth Patchen", a reference to Miriam Patchen's protection of her beloved Kenneth. Douskey and Miriam Patchen kept in touch until her passing in 2000.

Patchen espoused anarchism and pacifism, and much of his work opposes war. He was against U.S. involvement in World War II, believing that the high ideals of protecting democracy were betrayed by political machinations and senseless violence.

[edit] Career

In 1942 Patchen collaborated with the composer John Cage on the radio play The City Wears A Slouch Hat. In the early fifties he pioneered an artform which combined spoken poetry and jazz. Charles Mingus was one of his better-known collaborators. This was alluded to in Mingus' book, Beneath the Underdog, and the original liner notes from the Columbia LP, Mingus Ah Um. No known recordings of this particular collaboration are in existence.

Moe Ash of Folkways Records made some recordings of Patchen reading his poetry and excerpts from one of his novels. These recordings were released as "Kenneth Patchen Reads with Jazz in Canada" (1959), "Selected Poems of Kenneth Patchen" (1960), and "Kenneth Patchen Reads His Love Poems" (released 1961). "From Albion Moonlight" was recorded later at Patchen's home but not released until 1972 by Folkways. Many of his poems have been set to music by David Bedford. Composer Kyle Gann has set his voice reading a text to music (see below) and violinist Carla Kihlstedt set a text on the "Patchen" track of her solo Tzadik release Two Foot Yard. He was an influence on the beat movement.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Before the Brave, 1936
  • First Will and Testament, 1939
  • The Journal of Albion Moonlight, 1941
  • The Dark Kingdom, 1942
  • Cloth of the Tempest, 1943
  • The Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer, 1945
  • An Astonished Eye Looks Out of the Air, 1946
  • Outlaw of the Lowest Planet, 1946
  • The Selected Poems of Kenneth Patchen, 1946
  • Sleepers Awake, 1946
  • Panels for the Walls of Heaven,1946
  • Pictures of Life and Death, 1946
  • They Keep Riding Down All the Time, 1946
  • CCCLXXIV Poems, 1948
  • Red Wine and Yellow Hair, 1949
  • Fables and Other Little Tales, 1953
  • Poems of Humor and Protest, 1954
  • Hurrah for Anything, 1957
  • When We Were Here Together, 1957
  • The Love Poems of Kenneth Patchen, 1960
  • Hallelujah Anyway, 1966
  • But Even So, 1968
  • Wonderings, 1971
  • In Quest of Candlelighters, 1972
  • The Argument of Innocence, 1976
  • Patchen's Lost Plays, 1977
  • Still Another Pelican in the Breadbox, 1980

[edit] External links

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