Painted Poems of Kenneth Patchen

"I have in the last, oh fifteen years, as you know, done a great deal of graphic work, and it happens that very often my writing with pen is interrupted by my writing with brush, but I think of both as writing. In other words, I don't consider myself to be a painter. I think of myself as someone who has used the medium of painting in an attempt to extend. It gives an extra dimension to the medium of words."
Kenneth Patchen

1) wide crack in concrete

mention the visual poetry of kenneth patchen and usually his picture poems are what come to mind or are discussed - the poems in the new directions books such as HURRAH FOR ANYTHING, HALLELUJAH ANYWAY, BUT EVEN SO, and WONDERINGS. how many people i wonder are aware of the earlier visual poems in his novels and an earlier volume of poems? of those aware, how many continue to ignore the strength of vision and importance of this work within the context of the world-wide revival of the visual poem? for how long are those within the so-called critical enclaves of concrete and visual poetry going to continue ignoring the fact that patchen composed texts and poems which broke the linear reading habit with typographical fragmentation issuing the unique and inherent communication of letters, phonic characters, graphic signs, words and word groupings? or that he expanded the non-linear further with list poems, pattern poems, diagram poems, number poems, repetition poems, visual poems, op poems, and picture poems? or that he composed series after series of kinetic poems and events to add multi-dimensional cross currents which dance thruout the work all the while focusing with his esthetic sensibility upon the creative arrangement by embracing the expanse offered by love? SLEEPERS AWAKE, 1946, and PANELS FOR THE WALLS OF HEAVEN, 1946. these are the two major works which are continually ignored along with even earlier works in THE JOURNAL OF ALBION MOONLIGHT and CLOTH OF THE TEMPEST.

SLEEPERS AWAKE and PANELS FOR THE WALLS OF HEAVEN were published 5 years before the founder of concrete poetry, eugene gomringer, wrote his first constellation, and 10 years before concrete poetry began flaking around the globe.
by Karl Kempton