Kenneth Patchen
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.
“Our supper is plain but we are very wonderful.”
Kenneth Patchen
“You look nice in those old slacks, but in the raw you are Beauty herself.”
Kenneth Patchen
“I want to buy me a hat with a golden feather & a book with the confessions of God in it”
Kenneth Patchen
“It's dark out, Jack, the stations out there don't identify themselves, we're in it raw-blind like burned rats, it's running out all around us, the footprints of the beast, one nobody has any notion of. The white and vacant eyes of something above there, something that doesn't know we exist. I smell heartbreak up there, Jack, a heartbreak at the center of things, and in which we don't figure at all.”
Kenneth Patchen
“Ah I can see that.... You can see anything once you've been told it's there to see”
Kenneth Patchen
“Destiny is the music of the improbable. Were it otherwise, almost anyone could exist.”
Kenneth Patchen
“Come now, my child, if we were planning to harm you, do you think we'd be lurking here beside the path in the very darkest part of the forest?”
Kenneth Patchen
“Greatness and Truth can never be in danger from these murdering wretches. To perform one's duty, be it now, be it clean, and be it done with humility… A man is a sacred thing. ANY ACTION OR THOUGHT WHICH INJURES THE HUMAN IMAGINATION IS EVIL.”
Kenneth Patchen
“Art is not to throw light but to be light...”
Kenneth Patchen
“Then I felt her hand .... ** ....while I tried to get away ..... "Please, Mrs. Pippin!" .... She took her ... **** ... panting and saying .......... as she ........ under the bed where I thought I'd be safe for a little while, but she reached under and ... ** ..... Just then someone opened the door and I said, "Help!Help!" as loud as I could but he only smiled and said, "Well that's one I'll have to try sometime." as Mrs. Pippin ....”
Kenneth Patchen
“There are so many little dyings How do we know which one of them is death?”
Kenneth Patchen
“There are so many little dyings that it doesn't matter which of them is death. ”
Kenneth Patchen
“All at Once Is What Eternity Is.”
Kenneth Patchen
“The one who comes to question himself cares for mankind.”
Kenneth Patchen
“God must have loved the people in power, for he made them so much like their own image of him.”
Kenneth Patchen
“Nobody's a long time.”
Kenneth Patchen
“This is the evening of the two-fisted prayer”
Kenneth Patchen