Aflame and Afun of Walking Faces

by Kenneth Patchen

Aflame and Afun of Walking Faces comprises a full offering of Patchen drawings, second to the first in time alone--both bear his inimitable stamp. To give some notion of the fables, imagine Mark Twain and Leopardi collaborating on a script for the Marx Brothers to act out at the birth of the world--by no means necessarily this one!

Genres: Poetry

Hardcover

First published February 1, 1970

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Woody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely bizarre... At first I chalked it up to random juxtapositions of absurd descriptions / but each odd description leads inevitably to the next, and the pleasure for the reader is in the initial shock, and then the process of perceiving the consequence. The drawings are like candy. Like a goofy prose version of Duncan.

[Eli Rojas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A smearing paintbrush

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

so so strange.

[Jessica Stephenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

THIS. Beautiful, whimsical nonsense.