Kenneth Patchen Tribute Page Anarchist, poet, novelist, pacifist -- from the Anarchist Encyclopedia & the Daily Bleed...

The Anarchist Encyclopedia:
A Gallery of Saints & Sinners ...

1/8/ --

Illustrated card, Imagine Seeing you here, by Kenneth Patchen, anarchist

Kenneth Patchen,
A Tribute Page

"Some were Rebels out of choice; I had none — I wish they'd give me just one speck of proof that this 'world of theirs' couldn't have been set up & handled better by a half-dozen drugged idiots bound hand & foot at the bottom of a ten-mile well.

It's always because we love that we are rebellious;
it takes a great deal of love to give a damn one way
or another what happens from now on:
I still do."

5/4/ --

In the blackness, well-fed, cultured, carefully shaven gentlemen sit before microphones at mahogany tables & push the planet inch by inch towards extinction. We have come to the generation of revolutionary hopelessness. Men throw themselves under the wheels of the monsters, Russia & America, out of despair, for identical reasons.
With almost no exceptions, the silentiaries of American literature pretend that such a state of affairs does not exist. In fact, most of them do not need to pretend. They have ceased to be able to tell good from evil.
One of the few exceptions is Kenneth Patchen. His voice is the voice of a conscience which is forgotten. He speaks from the moral viewpoint of the new century, the century of assured hope, before the dawn of the world-in-concentration-camp. But he speaks of the world as it is.
Imagine if suddenly the men of 1900 — H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, Peter Kropotkin, Romain Rolland, Martin Nexo, Maxim Gorky, Jack London — had been caught up, unprepared & uncompromised, fifty years into the terrible future.
Patchen speaks as they would have spoken, in terms of unqualified horror & rejection. He speaks as Émile Zola spoke once — “A moment in the conscience of mankind.”
— Kenneth Rexroth, "Kenneth Patchen, Naturalist of the Public Nightmare", from Bird in the Bush (New Directions, 1959).
Kenneth Patchen
http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/patchen.htm

6/29/ --
Let us have madness openly.
0 men Of my generation.
Let us follow
The footsteps of this slaughtered age:
See it trail across Time's dim land
Into the closed house of eternity
With the noise that dying has,
With the face that dead things wear –
nor ever say
We wanted more; we looked to find
An open door, an utter deed of love,
Transforming day's evil darkness;
but We found extended hell & fog Upon the earth,
& within the head
A rotting bog of lean huge graves.
      – Kenneth Patchen, "Let Us Have Madness"

6/30/ --
Away from this kingdom, from this last undefiled
place, I would keep our governments, our civilization,
& all other spirit-forsaken & corrupt institutions.

— Kenneth Patchen, excerpt from
"There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left",
The Love Poems of Kenneth Patchen

8/10/ --
                            I dig for my death
            in this thousand-watt dungheap.
            There isn’t even enough clean air.
To die in.
            O blood-bearded destroyer!
— Kenneth Patchen, excerpt, Irkalla's White Caves

http://www.angelfire.com/mn2/anarchistpoetry/patchendir/patchen.html

8/13/ --

"I am the world crier, & this is my dangerous career . . .
I am the one to call your bluff, & this is my climate."
— Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972)
http://www.rooknet.com/beatpage/writers/patchen.html

12/13/ --
Let us have madness openly.
0 men Of my generation.
Let us follow
The footsteps of this slaughtered age:
See it trail across Time's dim land
Into the closed house of eternity
With the noise that dying has,
With the face that dead things wear –
nor ever say
We wanted more; we looked to find
An open door, an utter deed of love,
Transforming day's evil darkness;
but We found extended hell & fog Upon the earth,
& within the head
A rotting bog of lean huge graves.
      — Kenneth Patchen, "Let Us Have Madness"

12/13/ --
DECEMBER 13
KENNETH PATCHEN
"Naturalist of the Public Nightmare." Poet, artist, hellraiser.

12/25/ --

What has been separated from the mother,
Must again be joined; for we were born of spirit,
& to spirit all mortal things return,
As it is necessary in the method of the earth.
So sings the parable of singleness.
My comforter does not conceal his face;
I have seen appearances that were not marshalled
By sleep.

— Kenneth Patchen, excerpt, "The Cloth of the Tempest"

http://www.connectotel.com/patchen/

12/13/1911 -- American poet Kenneth Patchen lives. Author (The Journal of Albion Moonlight; Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer) poet (Sleepers Awake, Poems of Humor & Protest), playwright, member of the San Francisco Anarchist Circle in the 1940s along with Rexroth, Philip Lamantia, Gary Snyder, et al.
Pioneered jazz poetry ("Kenneth Patchen Reads with the Chamber Jazz Sextet").
See also Kenneth Rexroth's Bird in the Bush.

His writings remain youth cult classics, from the Beats, to the hippies to today. Written before widespread public awareness of modern threats such as nuclear war & environmental devastation, portended today's concerns with clarity & gentle humor. Among his most charming/eloquent works are "picture poems," intuitive free verse combined with his fanciful paintings.

See the very fine fan site, Kenneth Patchen Homepage:
http://www.connectotel.com/patchen/
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~hreh0001/patchen.html

6/28/1934 -- American novelist & poet Kenneth Patchen marries Miriam Oikemus. Moves to Greenwich Village, New York. Writes reviews for New Republic. Member of the San Francisco Libertarian Circle in the 1940s along with fellow anarchists Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, et al. Pioneered jazz poetry.
"Patchen has gone back to the world of Edward Lear & interpreted it in terms of the modern sensibility of the disengaged, the modern comic horrors of le monde concentrationnaire. It is as if, not a slick New Yorker correspondent, but the Owl & the Pussycat were writing up Hiroshima."
— Kenneth Rexroth
http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/patchen.htm

His writings remain youth cult classics, from the Beats, to the hippies to today.
Written before widespread public awareness of modern threats such as nuclear war & environmental devastation, his writings portended today's concerns with clarity & gentle humor.
Among his most charming/eloquent works are "picture poems," intuitive free verse combined with his fanciful paintings.

"Not long before I worked with a poet named Patchen. He was wearing his scarlet jacket & sitting on a stool on a little stage in a theatre you walk upstairs to down on 14th street.
We improvised behind him while he read his poems, which I read ahead of time "It's dark out, Jack" — Patchen's a real artist, you'd dig him, doctor.
"I believe in truth" he said, "I believe that every good thought I have, all men shall have. I believe that the perfect shape of everything has been prepared.""
       — Charles Mingus, From Beneath the Underdog [p.330]

12/30/1957 -- Reported in "The Los Angeles Examiner" on a LA performance, Dec 30, 1957.

>
"Puts muscles in your ears," says Archie.
Kenneth Patchen Reads His Poetry With The Chamber Jazz Sextet (Cadence, circa 1957)

Patchen's occupation with poetry and jazz began back in April of 1957 when he met Allyn Ferguson, a jazz musician and band leader of The Chamber Jazz Sextet. The encounter ultimately led to the recording of Kenneth Patchen Reads with Allyn Ferguson and the Chamber Jazz Sextet (Cadence, 1957), multiple bookings at San Francisco's Blackhawk Club, an invitation to appear in Bobby Troup's TV show "Stars of Jazz", and tours in United States and Canada between 1957-1959.
"...not just words but phrases and thoughts so beautifully woven into the jazz background, and so expertly phrased and timed, that it is a revelation to the ear and mind."
Note: Because of Patchen's involvement in the poetry-jazz movement of the 1950's, he was, and still is, wrongly labeled as a Beat Poet. He later defended his position to a friend in a letter:
"The poet should resist all efforts to categorize him as a painted monkey on a stick, not for personal reasons alone, but because it does damage to poetry itself."
http://library.ucsc.edu/oac/exhibits/ms160web/index.html

6/28/1959 --

Allen Ginsberg and Kenneth Patchen backstage at the Living Theatre where Patchen was performing with Charlie Mingus, New York City 1959. Photo copyright © Harry Redl 1959, 2000.

http://jacketmagazine.com/12/index.shtml

10/30/1959 --

Image this... Jazz Play: "Don't Look Now" The first production of Patchen's jazz play "Don't Look Now" opened on Oct 31, 1959, at the Outside the Inside Theater in Palo Alto. It was produced by the Troupe Theatre group under the direction of Phillip Angeloff and ran for six weeks. The play was built around 7 characters interacting in an upside-down living room while a live jazz band reacted to the actions unfolding on stage. Critics labeled the play as "4th dimensional realism", "hallucinatory fantasy", "extra-sensory theater"..

http://jacketmagazine.com/12/index.shtml

1/8/1972 --
Kenneth Patchen — poet, novelist, painter, graphic designer, pacifist, early anarchist participant in the San Francisco Libertarian Circle — dies, Palo Alto, California.

Wonderful fan site worth a visit,
http://www.connectotel.com/patchen/

Patchen at wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Patchen

2/2/1972 -- Tribute for the anarchist poet/author Kenneth Patchen held at City Lights Poets Theater.
http://www.connectotel.com/patchen/

3/6/2000 -- US: Miriam Patchen 86, a longtime Palo Alto resident & peace activist, dies, peacefully, at her home in Palo Alto, California. Her life was dedicated to peace & justice & to the writing & art of her husband, fellow anarchist & poet, Kenneth Patchen.

Thou art clothed in robes of music
Thy voice awakens wings....
What does not perish
Lives in Thee.
— Kenneth Patchen

Born Sirkka Miriam Oikemus in Belmont, Mass. to Finnish socialist parents, she was politically active all her life. She claimed to have been the "youngest card-carrying member of the American Communist Party," having joined at the age of 7.

[Details, click here]

7/14/2000 -- England: A 3-hour Tribute to Kenneth & Miriam Patchen is held at the Tate Modern, London, 'For Kenneth & Miriam: A Poet & His Muse'.
Miriam Patchen 86, a longtime Palo Alto resident & peace activist, died March 6th, peacefully, at her home in Palo Alto, California. Her life was dedicated to peace & justice & to the writing & art of her husband, fellow anarchist & poet, Kenneth Patchen.
"I am the world crier, & this is my dangerous career . . .
I am the one to call your bluff,
& this is my climate."
— Kenneth Patchen

Miriam Is Not Amused, A Film By Kim Roberts - 23 min. - 16 mm.
Witty, wry & lyrical, Miriam Is Not Amused is a multilayered portrait of Miriam Patchen (1914 - March 2000) — activist, widow, & muse of famed poet Kenneth Patchen. The film combines rare archival footage with intimate observations of Miriam now.
From her non-traditional upbringing in the 20's & 30's, through the years spent in the shadow of her celebrated husband, to her current reinvention as a political provocateur, Miriam reveals the choices & the compromises of her extraordinary life. With a sharp tongue & quick wit, Miriam turns the tables on filmmaker & audience by challenging her own relevance as a documentary subject, & legendary artistic muse.
Born Sirkka Miriam Oikemus in Belmont, Mass. to Finnish socialist parents, she was politically active all her life. She claimed to have been the "youngest card-carrying member of the American Communist Party," having joined at the age of 7.
Thou art clothed in robes of music.
Thy voice awakens wings....
What does not perish
Lives in Thee.
— Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972)

Patchen has been admired by generations of writers, poets, artists & musicians including e e cummings, William Carlos Williams, T S Eliot & W H Auden, as well as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Adrian Mitchell, David Bedford, John Cage & Tony Cragg.
Henry Miller wrote of him:
"Kenneth Patchen is now & will remain one of the outstanding figures in American letters. He represents all that a poet should represent...No one can read him without being affected — & influenced in his own life & work." http://www.connectotel.com/patchen/index.html

8/24/2000 -- The City Wears Slouch Hat in NY City. This radio play by Kenneth Patchen was performed only once in 1941 on CBS Radio. The original music score was written by John Cage. The revived play shows this week at the Experimental Theatre, Henry Street Settlement, Aug. 16-27.
Patchen, novelist, poet & anarchist, is regarded as one of the forefathers of the beat movement, & was the first poet to combine spoken word with Jazz music, performing with the likes of Charlie Parker & Charles Mingus. Patchen's friend Kenneth Rexroth was another prominent poet involved in this development of jazz poetry.
http://www.connectotel.com/patchen/index.html

I am the joy of the desiring flesh
The days of my living
are summer days
The nights of my glory
outshine the blazing wavecaps of the heavens
at their floodtide
Mine is the confident hand shaping this world.
— Kenneth Patchen
http://www.connectotel.com/patchen/

HAVE YOU KILLED FOR YOUR MAN TODAY?

In these hands, the cities; in my weather, the armies
Of better things than die
To the scaly music of war.

The different men, who are dead,
Had cunning; they sought green lives
In a world blacker than your world;
But you have nourished the taste of sickness
Until all other tastes are dull in your mouths;
It is only we who stand outside the steaming tents
Of hypocrisy & murder
Who are "sick" —
This is the health you want.

Yours is the health of the pig which roots up
The vines that would give him food;
Ours is the sickness of the deer which is shot
Because it is the activity of hunters to shoot him.

In your hands, the cities, in my world, the marching
Of nobler feet than walk down a road
Deep with the corpses of every sane & beautiful thing.

— Kenneth Patchen

http://www.connectotel.com/patchen/
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~hreh0001/patchen.html

"The nightmares of Patchen’s narratives are the daily visions of millions."
— Kenneth Rexroth, "Kenneth Patchen, Naturalist of the Public Nightmare"

45. Kenneth Patchen, Naturalist Of The Public Nightmare (Rexroth)
kenneth patchen, Naturalist of the Public Nightmare. kenneth patchen has recentlypublished two books, Hurrah for Anything and When We Were Here Together.
http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/patchen.htm

Kenneth Patchen has recently published two books, Hurrah for Anything and When We Were Here Together Hurrah for Anything are free verse limericks. Patchen has gone back to the world of Edward Lear and interpreted it in terms of the modern sensibility of the disengaged, the modern comic horrors of le monde concentrationnaire . It is as if, not a slick New Yorker correspondent, but the Owl and the Pussycat were writing up Hiroshima. In When We Were Here Together Man thrives where angels die of ecstasy and pigs die of disgust.
The contemporary situation is like a long-standing, fatal disease. It is impossible to recall what life was like without it. We seem always to have had cancer of the heart. The first twenty-five years of the century were the years of revolutionary hope. Immediately after the First War, this hope became almost universal among educated people. There was a time when most men expected that soon, very soon, life was going to change; a new, splendid creature was going to emerge from its ancient chrysalis of ignorance, brutality, and exploitation.
Everything was going to be different. Even the commonest, most accepted routines of life would be glorified. Education, art, sex, science, invention, everything from clothing to chess would be liberated. All the soilure and distortion of ages of slavery would fall away. Every detail of life would be harmoniously, functionally related in a whole which would be the realization of those absolutes of the philosophers, the Beloved Community wedded to the Idea of Beauty.

— Away from this kingdom, from this last undefiled
place, I would keep our governments, our civilization,
& all other spirit-forsaken & corrupt institutions.

— Kenneth Patchen, excerpt from
"There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left",
The Love Poems of Kenneth Patchen

Works by Kenneth Patchen

1. Before the Brave. New York: Random House, 1936.
2. First Will and Testament. Norforlk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1939.
3. The Journal of Albion Moonlight. New York: The Author, 1941;
New York: United Book Guild, 1944;
Padell, 1945; New Directions, 1961.
4. The Dark Kingdom. New York: Harper Brothers, 1943.
5. The Teeth of the Lion. Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1942.
6. Cloth of the Tempest. New York: Harper Brothers, 1943.
7. Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer. New York: New Directions, 1945.
8. An Astonished Eye Looks Out of the Air. Waldport, Oregon: uUntide Press, 1946.
9. The Selected Poems of Kenneth Patchen. New York: New Directions, 1946.
10. Sleepers Awake. New York: Padell, 1946;
New Directions, 1969.
11. Panels for the Walls of Heaven. San Francisco: Bern Porter, 1946.
12. Picture of Life and Death. New York: Padell, 1946.
13. They Keep Riding Down All The Time. New York: Padell, 1946.
14. Outlaw of the Lowest Planet. London: The Grey Walls Press, 1946.
15. CCCLXXIV Poems. New York: Padell. [1947-48].
16. See You in the Morning. New York: Padell, 1947.
17. To Say If You Love Someone. Prairie City, Ill.: Decker Press, 1948.
18. Red Wine and Yellow Hair. New York: New Directions, 1949.
19. In Peaceable Caves. London: Grey Walls Press, 1950.
20. Orchards, Thrones and Caravans. San Francisco: The Print Workshop, 1952.
21. Fables and Other Little Tales. Highlands, North Carolina: Jonathan Williams, 1953.
22. The Famous Boating Party. New York: New Directions, 1954.
23. Poems of Humor and Protest. San Francisco: City Lights, 1954.
24. Glory Never Guesses. Silkscreen Folio, Hand-Run Edition by Frank Bacher, 1955.
25. Surprise for the Bagpipe Player. Silkscreen Folio, Hand-Run Edition By Frank Bacher, 1956.
26. Hurrah for Anythings. Highlands, North Carolina: Jonathan Williams, 1957.
27. When We Were Here Together. New York: New Directions, 1957.
28. Poemscapes. Highlands, North Carolina: Jonathan Williams, 1958.
29. The Moment. Palo Alto: Kenneth Patchen, 1960.
30. The Love Poems of Kenneth Patchen. San Francisco: City Lights, 1960.
31. Because It Is. New York: New Directions, 1960.
32. Doubleheader. New York: New Directions, 1966.
33. Hallelujah Anyway. New York: New Directions, 1966
34. Collected Poems of Kenneth Patchen. New York: New Directions, 1968.
35. Love & War Poems. Mickleover, England: Whisper & Shout, 1968.
36. But Even So. New York: New Directions, 1968.
37. Selected Poems. London: Jonathan Cape, 1968.
38. Aflame and Afun of Walking Faces. New York: New Directions, 1970.
39. There's Love All Day. Hallmark Edition, 1970.
40. Wonderings. New York: New Directions, 1971.
41. Tell You That I Love You. Hallmark Edition, 1971.
42. In Quest of Candlelighters. New York: New Directions, 1972.
43. Patchen's Lost Plays. Santa Barbara, California: Capra Press, 1977.
44. What Shall We Do Without Us? The Voice and Vision of Kenneth Patchen.
San Francisco: The Yolla Bolly Press, Sierra Club Book, 1984.

http://library.ucsc.edu/oac/exhibits/ms160web/textonly.html

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