Selected Poems [Paperback]

Kenneth Patchen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 1957

This selection is drawn from ten earlier volumes by the poet who has been called "the most compelling force in American poetry since Whitman."

The late Kenneth Patchen was unique among contemporary poets for his direct and passionate concern with the most essential elements in the tragic, comic, blundering and at rare moments glorious world around us. He wrote about the things we can feel; with our whole being—the senselessness of war, the need for love among men on earth, the presence of God in man, the love for a beloved woman, social injustice and the continual resurgence of the beautiful in life.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972) was one of the most prolific American poets of his time. He was born in Niles, Ohio. He attended school at the University of Madison-Wisconsin where he met his wife, Miriam Oikemus. They moved to Greenwich Village and befriended many writers including E.E. Cummings, Anais Nïn, and Henry Miller. An accident occurred after his first publication that would eventually leave him an invalid. He and his wife later moved to San Francisco during the early years of the Beat Movement. Many Beat poets would cite Patchen as a major influence. His "experimental protests" in poetry, painting, and prose remain unprecedented. Aside from his many books of poetry, his acclaimed novels, and his concrete visual works, Kenneth Patchen also collaborated with John Cage for the radio-play The City Wears a Slouch Hat, and worked with Charles Mingus developing jazz poetry. Patchen was an unwavering pacifist and many of his works have a political bent. Patchen was the first recipient of an NEA Literary Grant in 1967.

Product Details

• Paperback: 146 pages
• Publisher: New Directions; Stated 1st paperback Edition edition (January 17, 1957)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811201465
• ISBN-13: 978-0811201469
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #920,108 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful... in parts., November 23, 2002

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Selected Poems (Paperback)

Kenneth Patchen, Selected Poems (New Directions, 1957)

Selected by the New Directions staff after Patchen's death, Selected Poems was meant to introduce a new generation to the poet and novelist the back cover calls "the most compelling force in American poetry since Whitman." (One wonders what Allen Ginsberg, whose "Howl" had been published by New Directions two years previous, had to say about that.) The collection does a good job at introduction, and does an even better job at showing the inconsistency of Patchen's poetic work.

Even those readers who have never attempted creative writing themselves are likely to have had at least one English teacher try and hammer "show, don't tell" into their heads. Patchen's contemporary and fellow New Directions poet William Carlos Williams put it even better: "no ideas but in things." Marshall McLuhan called this immutable rule "the medium is the message." Patchen understood this, and his best work in this collection shows it in breathtaking style, especially in a collection of short prose pieces from The Famous Boating Party towards the end of the book that are worth slogging through the first hundred pages. However, the majority of those first hundred pages show Patchen forgot it, and regularly, in his fervor to write tepid, ineffectual antiwar poems. It's hard to imagine the same guy wrote the painfully awkward

He who can come to his own formulation
Shall be found to assume mastery
Over the roads which lead
On the whole human event
("The Climate of War")

also wrote the jaw-dropping

Sword on the wind, black knuckles of a thief, is this
King to be left here like a cast-off dog? the bloated
tongues of flies licking the juice of is saving wounds?
("Red Wine and Yellow Hair")

As the above section from the uniformly wonderful "Red Wine and Yellow Hair" hopefully makes evident, when Patchen is on his game, he is very, very on his game. Every once in a while, especially towards the end of the book, something rises out of the stew of didacticity and smackes the reader right between the eyes. And those moments are well worth the cover price of this book. I just wish there had been more of them. ***

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunningly Wonderful Poetry!, April 9, 2011

By 

Grimy G - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Selected Poems (Paperback)

Remember your first kiss with the cutest girl in the neighborhood? Remember that favorite pet you hope to see again on the Rainbow Bridge? Kenneth Patchen's best works are truly magical. Forget everything else you've ever read. This guy was simply the most colorful, sincere, and imaginative of them all. Do I sound like a cheerleader? Believe me, it's hard for me to get excited about most art or reality, but I'm still stunned by Patchen's dazzling brilliance after all these years. I'm an English teacher by profession, and given a hard choice, I'd literally rather have some Patchen than the collected works of every other writer, dead or alive.

5.0 out of 5 stars Yummy-licious poetry, January 10, 2010

By 

Susanne C. Donoghue - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Selected Poems (Paperback)

I purchased this book because it had one of my favorite poems in it: "What There Is." I did not know that Patchen was such a prolific poet, however, and the books contains many poems new to me. This is fairly comprehensive, containing far more than the first collection of his which I bought in the 1970s.