Kenneth Patchen Critical Essay | Critical Essay by James Schevill

Critical Essay by James Schevill

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 Patchen's work, they were apt to take lines out of context … and call these too literal or too sentimental. In a time when poetry has often limited itself to the search for novelty in every line (Pound's dictum: Make it new), Patchen always sought the complete expression. This makes it relatively easy for apolitical, formalist critics to object to Patchen's poetry and to criticize individual lines.

The term, 'every...
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