Collected Poems

by Kenneth Patchen

From the appearance in 1936 of Kenneth Patchen's first book, the voice of this great poet has been protesting war and social injustice, satirizing the demeaning and barbarous inanities of our culture--entrancing us with an inexhaustible flow of humor and fantasy.

Genres: Poetry

516 pages, Paperback

First published January 17, 1968

About the author

Kenneth Patchen was an American poet and novelist. He experimented with different forms of writing and incorporated painting, drawing, and jazz music into his works, which have been compared with those of William Blake and Walt Whitman. Patchen's biographer wrote that he "developed in his fabulous fables, love poems, and picture poems a deep yet modern mythology that conveys a sense of compassionate wonder amidst the world's violence." Along with his friend and peer Kenneth Rexroth, he was a central influence on the San Francisco Renaissance and the Beat Generation.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

O maestro. The pantheon is full with your bluster. From the lacking of these mundane letters emits the flesh, the curse, the soul, the palpitating tissue, organs spewing blood, from this, the very being is littered with atrophy, with symphony, with the bludgeoning. I will fall apart at the seams with emotion flooding out through the cranium, through the eyes, & corridors of my hearing, flowing with diamonds, & flowers, bullets, broken bottles, & bombs. If ever I was dead now am I living due to the realizations the embrace of a kindred soul! My heart aches that it could not be sewn to yours in some awkward deathly rhythm sending us both to proper fields of our escaping this wretchedness. You ring true as this divine note that is untainted by jealous gods or bland rituals bloodthirsty in their demise. I wish you peace sir. I wish you all the goodness that has & ever will flow! I wish that all beings could share, as we do, the bottomless fountain of love that reimburses those that seek it out. What a monstrosity comes through this humanistic gate we did not ask for, though we aspire to transcend it, to become it wholly, to revive it, to heal it, to resuscitate it. Under the weakness of our flesh shines through with impending mortality. No one can say we did not try. No one can say we did not rip our organs out & hand them to whomever could use them is a positive manner, whether they sought to demonically devour them or use them, share their vitality. You have blessed me, & in turn, I plan to bless all that invite me. We all blessed are blessings. Syntax was a rusted cage which had far exceeded its use & yet you could wield this obsolete tool into its purest value. Toying with the forms of language. Abusing syntax to his own diabolical means. The wizard defying laws & wielding words as insanely wondrous as possible. Melding the unmalleable. Breathing life into inanimate, archaic symbols. What foliage you plant upon the mind & heart! In the wake of living he has tapped into an inalienable knowledge which poets possess by being open to that which dispenses all knowledge. Throughout history poets have struggled to convey how the unknown dawns itself upon their carapace. It is through this inviting demeanor; the welcomeness which personifies the beacon, one can become when choosing to abuse one’s corporeal vessel as a lightning rod for all the potent experiences of existence. It is indeed a violent act but one which the poet refuses to relinquish nor would ever fathom trading. You are a window, a mirror, & a magnet for everything that compiles the polarities of light & dark. Also, you revel in the gray & not only make it tolerable, but in fact, amusing. To be privy of such a glorious journey is an honor bestowed upon this reader. I am indebted to the wielding of such expressions. I am drawn to kiss his very words. A magnificent heart. He magnetizes me & puts many to shame with sheer brilliance. What dishonor I do in enveloping him in praise because I know he was a very humble man. Yet courageous in his language. A kindred spirit, he voices his opinions without remorse because he feels they will do well to heal the world if ever heeded. I feel his pain & suffering in watching humanity devour itself. What rage is built up from such visions. With his purely original social commentary capturing the despair of his generation & of the hard times America faced but has seemed to forget. He possesses an almost boundless imagination. I say almost, not because he showed signs of having limitations, far from it. I say almost because he cannot be a poetic deity, can he? He has to be human & humans have limits. He has me mesmerized to the point that in my dying moments I think I shall have to trade my last breaths for the memory of his words.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe one of the things I'm proudest of is turning Philip Dawkins on to this poet. (Literally. He slept with the book. Read his review.) Patchen is my favorite poet and I feel I have only scratched the surface of his work. He represents, without hyperbole, everything I love about poetry in particular, and the playful, sad, beauty of the English language as a whole. I first read him in college and fell in love, and unlike most things I loved in college (Southern Comfort, Our Lady Peace, girls) my feelings for Patchen are unchanged.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few poets keep my attention over the years like Patchen. His blend of human worries and divine introspection adds new depth to every reading, and unlike many inspired by the modernists he succeeds at form and meaning. His "Instructions for Angels" is amazing and answers every Vonnegut-ian question of the reader.
"Put the tips of your fingers/ On a baby man; / Teach him to be beautiful."

[Adrienne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Patchen was one of my favorites when I was in college. He did a great book which is hard to find where he took fish, dipped them in ink and then laid them on paper. With a Japanese coligraphy (sp) he wrote his poems. It was a fresh idea that has not been replicated as well that I know of.

[P.D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite poets. We don't hear enough about Patchen.

[Larry Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patchen is such a maverick figure, making his various forms of art, yet also a craftsman with vision and imagination. He "makes it new" again and again, never wrote the same book twice. Much to learn from this great Amercan poet here.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

An old favorite of mine.

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the innocence of Kenneth Patchen's voice. He represents a particular time and attitude. His romantic poems are especially strong.

[Josh Cohen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection is a mixed bag. Patchen wrote some wonderful poems, but his early leftist political poems have not aged well.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

pure and simple as the shepherd's song

[Gonzo Curie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patchen is a cousin of the Beatniks, but doesn’t quite fit in. He is not as cynical, for one thing. His poems are unlike those of any other poet. He was also a playwright, anti-novelist and painter. Well worth checking out!

[Natalie Melendez]

man of anger/light

[Skipr · Rating 1 out of 5]

Actually, I (attempted to) read the 1958 New Directions imprint "The Selected Poems of Kenneth Patchen" (Enlarged Edition). No thanks.

[Christopher · Rating 1 out of 5]

The poet Kenneth Patchen is a fascinating figure. He was a conscientious objector in World War II, the "good war" even many pacifists would refuse to have stayed out of. He was unconnected to academia, writing highly personal poetry without quotation of other works or allusions to the canon. And he was an eclectic figure, the poet-as-loner one moment and a collaborator with jazzmen in poetry recitals the next. Yet, for all the fascinating details of his biography, his poetry is overwhelmingly disappointing. This volume of "collected poems", really a selection of material from 1936 to 1967 that leaves quite a bit out, shows the wild inconsistency of his entire career.

In the poetry of World War II, pacifist prophecy is in the spotlight, and it is often as troublesome to the reader as Ezra Pound's work of the same era. In the "The Stars Go to Sleep So Peacefully", the first poem selected from "An Astonished Eye Looks Out of the Air" (1945), written long after the U.S. was dragged into the war and the Final Solution was under way, Patchen calls the Allies "little fools ... in haste of money". That he afterwards adds the eloquent lines "Love is impaled on a million bayonets" doesn't mean the reader forgets about his peculiar view on this war. In "The Way Men Live is a Lie", from the same volume, a diatribe against supposedly greedy generals looking for profit--which due to its considerable use of profanity I cannot quote here--is again followed by general pacifist sentiments that would be unobjectionable if not for what came before.

The war poems could be left aside if the rest of the material were good--as, for example, is often done with Pound. But he other themes make for embarrassing verse. Patchen deeply loved his life Miriam, writing numerous love poems to her. These, however, are usually doggerel worthy of shy high-school note passing. Take, for example, the poem "For Myriam" (1942): "O the world is a place of veils and roses / when she is there / I come to her in wonder / ... And there is nothing cruel or mad or evil / Anywhere."

This last poem features furthermore one of Patchen's most tired trope, the filler "O". Almost every poem of his contains this, e.g. "O the eagle empties his terrible eye upon them", "O the beautiful again...", "O the wonderful wonderful wonderful", "O green birds / that sings the earth to wakefulness", "O she is as lovely-often as every day". Patchen the poet had no skill in naturally flowing poetry, everything is full of ridiculous rhetorical exaggeration.

Patchen's prose works, THE JOURNAL OF ALBION MOONLIGHT (published by New Directions) and SLEEPERS AWAKE (long out of print, but available at many libraries) are much less problematic than his poetry.

[Kathleen]

A book of Collected Poems is always a mixed bag. Hopefully readers come to any poet's collected works with a sense of curiosity about how they developed as artists over time. The idea is not to be wowed on every page. If you want that kind of experience, you must seek out a Selected Works instead. And also, you don't HAVE to read every poem in a collected works! You can--gasp!--skip around. That is a very valid reading choice.

When I first encountered Patchen's work, it changed me utterly. I had never encountered poetry like his and I wanted more. For this reason, if no other, I will always have a strong connection to his work, even if, as I age, my estimation of his body of work changes. There are still enough hidden treasures in this collection to earn it a special place on my shelf. And I do wish Patchen were not falling into oblivion for lack of new readers, but it appears that is happening, and it makes me sad.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

My friend gave this to me randomly. It was lucky.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the great experimental writers of the 20th century, gets better with repeated
readings. look for his jazz poetry recordings and listen....

[Ginger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this stuff my first year of college.

[Lynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Atmospheric yet concise. Beautiful poetry.