SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE OF KENNETH PATCHEN

The new Kenneth Patchen letters book
is now available pre-order from Amazon.com
in hardbound and soft cover.

Here's the chapter list:

Chapter One:

AN IMAGINARY WORLD (1929-1933)

Chapter Two:

POETRY AND RANDOM HOUSE (1933-1934)

Chapter Three:

BEFORE THE WAR (1935-1937)

Chapter Four:

THE HUNTED CITY (1938)

Chapter Five:

NEW DIRECTIONS (1939)

Chapter Six:

ALBION MOONLIGHT (1940-1941)

Chapter Seven:

ONE WHO KNOWS (1942-1943)

Chapter Eight:

ON THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS (1944-1945)

Chapter Nine:

SLEEPERS AWAKE (1946)

Chapter Ten:

ON THE RESTRICTED SHELF (1947)

Chapter Eleven:

I CHALLENGE THE RIGHT (1948-1949)

Chapter Twelve:

A VOICE OF FIRE (1950-1951)

Chapter Thirteen:

SAN FRANCISCO (1952-1955)

Chapter Fourteen:

ON ANOTHER PLANET (1956)

Chapter Fifteen:

THE WOODS ARE SO FULL (1957)

Chapter Sixteen:

ONE DAY, WHEN THIS STORY IS TOLD (1958-1960)

Chapter Seventeen:

BEHIND THE ICE CURTAIN (1961-1966)

Chapter Eighteen:

ON THE SIDE OF LIFE (1967-1971)

Rejected New Yorker Comic

A while ago I sent in a few cartoons to
The New Yorker magazine as a joke.
They all had to include a snooty phrase.
This is the only one I still have.
Unfortunately, their rejection reply
got lost behind the refrigerator of
the old house we used to rent.
This one is still funny.

Speaking of Lincoln

In honor of Bernard Waber's books
this is a story from my Home Recordings
(2009, Bird Dog Publishing) originally
published in Pie in the Sky magazine #24
(pieintheskymagazine.blogspot.com/)
March 15, 1993 12:24 PM:

THE SECOND TIME

They decided to wait until winter to cut at

the blackberry bushes piled behind their house.

When January set in across everything, the vines

would shed their leaves and snake back to burrow,

then they could cut them and rake the ground and

turn it into a garden in Spring. It would be good

to have it gone. In August they picked ripe berries

to make their last ever jam and pies.

Early in December, snow fell, but they were

going to wait a little longer. The vines tangled

in the cold. Wearing double layers of clothes,

Elmer Ford marched up and down the hall,

ringing a bell. This was the morning they had

all been waiting for. Children came running

through doors. Outside, they fell around the

frozen vines and sliced at them with rakes

and wooden swords. Elmer even tied a rope

from the bumper of his Model T and dragged

roots out of the ground. That’s how he dislodged

the tube. It was plowed out of the earth like

a bomb, it sparkled as something golden

from Mars in the weak sunlight.

Elmer’s children were making drum noises on it

with their rakes and weapons when he got out of

the tin car and made them stop. He examined

the steel hollow tube and he found letters on it,

underneath the dirt and weeds. Already one of

his sons had discovered a silver door handle

on the side and he turned it open. The hiss

of steam threw them all backwards, they stared

as a tall man stood up. It was him, it was

Abraham Lincoln. He put on his stovepipe hat

to shade his eyes from the glare of the

twentieth century America. To get his bearings

here, in a ruin of blackberry vines fifty years

after the war, he cleared his throat and gave

the Gettysburg Address again.

Just Like Abraham Lincoln

Last night we read Just Like Abraham Lincoln
by Bernard Waber, Houghton Mifflin Co, Boston, 1964.
What a great book! What will happen when Mr. Potts
pushes his Lincoln obsession? Will he defy history
and appear at the school theater? And how about
that surprise ending?!

"I'm not saying..."

I'm not saying I know who drew this fish
and taped it to the new display case at work
but I bet it's the same person who put a
photo of Richard Nixon on the paper shredder...

(By the way, these were taken down pretty quickly.) 

The $5 Ghost

The $5 Ghost

My sister bought a ghost for five dollars.

Her friend arranged the sale and gave us

specific directions which we followed precisely.

First we wrote a welcoming letter to the ghost.

At 8 o’clock we opened the front door an inch

and placed the note beside a candle. We sat

in the hallway for a while, lit by the yellow glow.

We were tuned to the ghost frequency, listening

for the smallest sigh or voice, jumping at flickers.

I guess we were expecting a ghost to arrive with

a suitcase. I know I was. It was easy to believe

in that. But after waiting a while, my sister gave up

grabbed the letter and stormed to the phone.

Maybe we were swindled. It’s hard to tell

when you’re buying something invisible

and just because you don’t see what

you expected doesn’t mean something

didn’t happen. Who knows?

I shut the door, blew the candle out

and carried the smoke with me.

drawings by Rustle and Rosa
another chapter selection from
the autobiography I've been working on.

Jubilee Hitchhiker

I’ve been reading William Hjortsberg’s brand new
biography of Richard Brautigan, Jubilee Hitchhiker.
I’ve been looking forward to this one for a long time.
Just this morning, before I had to run off for the bus,
I learned of, “Brautigan’s high regard for the work
of Kenneth Patchen…According to Virginia [Alder,
his first wife], Patchen’s poetry ‘was one of the
first things we talked about.’ ” (p. 124)
This book is fantastic, a huge saga of
one of my favorite writers.
Up to page 236 now, still in awe
Hjortsberg's writing is like a movie
Brautigan and his story as alive as can be.
I almost missed my bus again this morning
looked at the clock in the kitchen
running through the woods and now
it's 11:49 PM and awake from sleep
I'm reading it again.
That being said (up to page 476)
there's something monstrous too
about this book, from its 'Sunset
Boulevard' beginning to the sheer size
and weight of it, holding on to it to read.
Also, reading it before going to bed,
it sits there all night like 'Donovan's Brain'
creeping into your dreams.