Synopsis
Here is the definitive biography of American poet and artist Kenneth Patchen. Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972) was a poet, novelist, artist, performer of poetry-jazz in the tradition of engaged writing which he helped forge in America. Producing a book a year during his writing life, his work and life stand as a huge exposed girder in the structure of American culture and art. His friendships with such writers as James Laughlin, Henry Miller, E. E. Cummings, Muriel Rukeyser, Amos Wilder, Dylan Thomas, Lewis Mumford, Kenneth Rexroth, David Dellinger, Jonathan Williams, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti place him at the center of dissident writing in America.
Rising from his native grounds in working-class Ohio, he became a leading figure among the Leftist thinkers and artists of 1930�s and 1940�s Greenwich Village, then moved on to the West Coast where he created dynamic blends of poetry and art, poetry and jazz, poetry and theater. Finally crippled with back pain during the last decades of his life, he created the famed picture poems of his Wonder Period.
For four decades on East and West Coasts, by the force of his will and native genius, Patchen molded life and art as one. With the loving support of wife Miriam, he endured the pain and travail of years of struggle to recast an art based on truth and striking beauty. The tale of Kenneth and Miriam Patchen has become one of the great lover stories of American literature. His is the story of the rebel artist in America.
About the Author
Larry Smith is a poet, novelist, critic, and biographer. His literary biographies include Kenneth Patchen (Twayne Series, G.K. Hall, 1978) and Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Poet-at-Large (Southern Illinois University Press, 1983). His also wrote and co-produced with Tom Koba two video docu-dramas Kenneth Patchen: Poet of Engagement and James Wright's Ohio. He has edited books of
Appalachian and working-class writing for Bottom Dog Press. Together with his wife Ann and poet Phil Metres he edited the national anthology Come Together: Imagine Peace for Bottom Dog Press.
Smith is a professor emeritus of English and Humanities at Firelands College of Bowling Green State University and holds a doctorate from Kent State University. In 1980-1981 he held a Fullbright lectureship in Sicily where he taught a course on American Romanticism and the Beat Movement. His recent books include the novels The Long River Home and The Free Farm, and two books of poetry, A River Remains and Each Moment All.
As a native of the industrial Ohio River Valley he shares a working-class background with author Kenneth Patchen. He and wife Ann live along the shores of Lake Erie in Huron, Ohio.
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