Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972) was a major American experimental poet and novelist influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism. Kenneth Patchen's father was a steel worker in Youngstown and, later, in Warren, Ohio. As a young man Patchen followed his father's...

From the publication of his passionately proletarian volume of poetry Before the Brave in 1936 until his death in 1972, Kenneth Patchen produced roughly a book a year--all of them daringly bold in form and fiercely uncompromising in values and vision....

Kenneth Patchen was a part of the air the Beats breathed. By the time they arrived in the San Francisco area in the mid-1950s, he was already there as an elder statesman of the American avant-garde. Born 13 December 1911 to Wayne and Eva Patchen, he...

Kenneth Patchen (1911–1972) American novelist, poet, and playwright. An archetypal rebel poet, Patchen wrote angry, uncompromising, anti-war poetry, experimented with the form of the novel, attempted to merge poetry with graphics and jazz, and...

Kenneth Patchen (December 13 1911 – January 8 1972) was an American poet and novelist. Though he denied any direct connection, Patchen's work and ideas regarding the role of artists paralleled those of the Dadaists and Surrealists. Patchen's...

In a sense, Before the Brave and First Will and Testament constituted the most forthright, the most inspired "proletarian" poetry of our time. But [Patchen's] spirit was too independent, too innately creative and prophetic, to remain long within the Marxist orbit. It is probable that the outbreak of the Second World War hastened his precipitate retreat to the fastness of the self. Before the Brave sounded a call to revolutionary battle. (p. 181)

It is too soon for any authoritative statement about [Patchen's] poetic range. Too much of his poetry is concealed…. He was always a prolific, hardworking writer who scorned increasingly any boundaries between poetry, prose, and art. This tendency to focus on new, unified dimensions of art, combined with his illness and inability to give readings, caused his reputation to suffer during the 1960s. Various critics tended either to ignore his poetry or dismiss it too easily. When they did discuss...

Whether or not [The Journal of Albion Moonlight] is a good [book] (let's not talk prematurely of genius) I believe it to be a right one, a well directed one and a hopeful one. It is the sort of book that must be attempted from time to time, a book to violate all the taboos, a racial necessity as it is a paradisiacal one, a purge in the best sense—suggesting a return to health and to the craft itself after the little word-and-thought pansies have got through their nibbling. (p. 7) Patchen lets ...