OscailtKenneth Patchen"Now is then’s only tomorrow."
Kenneth Patchen was and is an underrated American poet, a surrealist, an anarchist, a founder of the Beat movement, a painter and illustrator. I came across his works when we ran Erewhon Books, the Anarchist Bookstore in Edmonton in the seventies and eighties.2011-07-15T11:05:21+08:00Anarkismoanarkismoeditors@lists.riseup.nethttp://www.anarkismo.net/atomfullposts?story_id=3296http://www.anarkismo.net/graphics/feedlogo.gifPatchen's politicshttp://www.anarkismo.net/article/3296#comment134682011-07-15T11:05:21+08:00Patchen fanKenneth Patchen from what I understand was more communist than anarchist. Anyway...Kenneth Patchen from what I understand was more communist than anarchist. Anyway, whatever his politics he had a revolutionary and humane spirit. He drifted away from political themes and was disgusted by stalinism, and the failure of stalins opponents to oppose stalinism. He was one of the few "proletarian" poets who actually was proletarian. His work Sleepers Awake was one of the few books to oppose WWII from a classically revolutionary defeatist perspective, which he blends with a humanistic outlook. It is a massive prose poem and is worth reading, as is the Journal of Albion Moonlight. He was extremely prolific. He was also a painter of picture poems. Sadly his audience has for decades been mostly American lefties, which makes for a small audience. My high school math teacher introduced me to his poetry during a poetry reading assignment in my class long ago. It was the Patchen poem "I don't mean to startle you but they are going to kill most of us". The poem floored me. It gave me a love of poetry and revolution. He was the son of an Ohio steel worker and a Scottish immigrant. He even worked in a mill himself for a time. When he died his wife Miriam, to whom his poems were often dedicated, couldn't afford the burial. I met a man who helped pay for the burial and he was given one of Kenneth's paintings as a gift, which I had the privilege of seeing. I recommend reading Kenneth Patchen.