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The Walking-Away World
The singular work of Kenneth Patchen has influenced poets, artists and political activists for decades. New Directions is proud to launch a Patchen revival beginning with omnibus editions of his unique compositions.
Kenneth Patchen's last words to New Directions founder James Laughlin were "When you find out which came first, the chicken or the egg, you write and tell me." Answering his own question comes Patchen's "picture-poem." The Walking-Away World reissues three of his picture-poem classics: Wonderings, But Even So, and Hallelujah Anyway. Inspired by the "illuminated printing" of William Blake, Patchen worked in a spirited fervency with watercolor, casein, inks, and other media to create absurdly compelling works. His entire process was a simultaneous fusion of painting and poetry: neither the poem nor the painting preceded one another. Each picture-poem is inhabited by strange beings uttering everything from poignant poetic adages to cheeky satire. One confides, "I have a funny feeling / that some very peculiar-looking creatures out there are watching us," which sums up the suspicious joys of The Walking-Away World.
Kenneth Patchen's last words to New Directions founder James Laughlin were "When you find out which came first, the chicken or the egg, you write and tell me." Answering his own question comes Patchen's "picture-poem." The Walking-Away World reissues three of his picture-poem classics: Wonderings, But Even So, and Hallelujah Anyway. Inspired by the "illuminated printing" of William Blake, Patchen worked in a spirited fervency with watercolor, casein, inks, and other media to create absurdly compelling works. His entire process was a simultaneous fusion of painting and poetry: neither the poem nor the painting preceded one another. Each picture-poem is inhabited by strange beings uttering everything from poignant poetic adages to cheeky satire. One confides, "I have a funny feeling / that some very peculiar-looking creatures out there are watching us," which sums up the suspicious joys of The Walking-Away World.
304 pages, Paperback
First published July 28, 2008
3 people are currently reading
67 people want to read
About the author
Kenneth Patchen
157 books128 followersKenneth 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.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 25, 2019
Among other things, Kenneth Patchen created many instance of illustrated poetry. I became aware of them through a comic by Nick Thorkelson, available here on that artist's website.
There is really nothing else quite like them. For copyright reasons, I will not include any images here, but just do a google image search for "Kenneth Patchen" and you'll find some.
This books collects three collections that were published individually. One star is lost because the reproductions are in black and white. Unfortunately this was common. In an introduction Jim Woodring states that many people would be surprised to know that they were painted in color. Sad. They loose a lot in reduction to b/w.
Under the right management, he probably could have gained money and fame by producing T-shirts, posters, calendars and the like. Instead he was published in b/w poetry journals and books.
Like Woodring, I enjoy most the images with shorter texts, like "I proclaim this International Shut Your Big Fat Flapping Mouth Week" and "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?"
There is really nothing else quite like them. For copyright reasons, I will not include any images here, but just do a google image search for "Kenneth Patchen" and you'll find some.
This books collects three collections that were published individually. One star is lost because the reproductions are in black and white. Unfortunately this was common. In an introduction Jim Woodring states that many people would be surprised to know that they were painted in color. Sad. They loose a lot in reduction to b/w.
Under the right management, he probably could have gained money and fame by producing T-shirts, posters, calendars and the like. Instead he was published in b/w poetry journals and books.
Like Woodring, I enjoy most the images with shorter texts, like "I proclaim this International Shut Your Big Fat Flapping Mouth Week" and "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?"
September 20, 2012
The greatest authors and artists are the ones who create alternative realities to compete with this bloody and manifestly unjust one, and Kenneth Patchen does just that in the collection of his picture-poems entitled THE WALKING-AWAY WORLD.
During the last years of his life, this great poet and anti-novelist was mostly confined to his huge bed in the tiny home that he and his muse/wife Miriam shared. This was due to his chronic back pain, the result of an earlier injury. Apparently, doctors operating on him had screwed up the procedure intended to cure his decades long, debilitating pain; they may have even dropped him or allowed him to fall from the table! Since we have the "finest in the world" legal system, lawyers argued that since Patchen didn't earn much money as a poet, he wasn't entitled to just compensation. In other words, the "Criminal" Justice system remained true to its name.
Patchen was left in a chronic state of agony for the rest of his days. Unable to concentrate effectively for more than brief spurts at a time, he decided to devote much of his time to the picture-poems of which THE WALKING-AWAY WORLD is comprised.
These works may be called all of the following: defiantly joyous, surreal, fiercely condemning of a cruel universe, and clever expressions of whimsy and word play. The writing is often absurdist, sometimes hopeless, and then again at times quite life-affirming; but it is always moving and original.
Strange, enchanting creatures from some parallel universes populate the pages and speak to us from their realms. This is not art slavishly enslaved to what we see in or current world. These beings from Patchen's brain share remarkable messages and revelations of light with us. Ignore them at your peril.
During the last years of his life, this great poet and anti-novelist was mostly confined to his huge bed in the tiny home that he and his muse/wife Miriam shared. This was due to his chronic back pain, the result of an earlier injury. Apparently, doctors operating on him had screwed up the procedure intended to cure his decades long, debilitating pain; they may have even dropped him or allowed him to fall from the table! Since we have the "finest in the world" legal system, lawyers argued that since Patchen didn't earn much money as a poet, he wasn't entitled to just compensation. In other words, the "Criminal" Justice system remained true to its name.
Patchen was left in a chronic state of agony for the rest of his days. Unable to concentrate effectively for more than brief spurts at a time, he decided to devote much of his time to the picture-poems of which THE WALKING-AWAY WORLD is comprised.
These works may be called all of the following: defiantly joyous, surreal, fiercely condemning of a cruel universe, and clever expressions of whimsy and word play. The writing is often absurdist, sometimes hopeless, and then again at times quite life-affirming; but it is always moving and original.
Strange, enchanting creatures from some parallel universes populate the pages and speak to us from their realms. This is not art slavishly enslaved to what we see in or current world. These beings from Patchen's brain share remarkable messages and revelations of light with us. Ignore them at your peril.
December 4, 2025
I had previously only read a collection of the Selected Poems of Kenneth Patchen. They were enjoyable, but left me with no interest to read more. Perhaps I was too young when I first read his works, or maybe I've just grown to appreciate them more. Or maybe it is the weirdness and wonderfulness of this particular collection that stirred something in me.
It was in recently reading Henry Miller's Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, which included an essay on Patchen that I decided to give him another try. And, boy, am I glad I did!
Like other subjects of Miller's essays - Arthur Rimbaud, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Eugene Ionesco, the Comte de Lautréamont - Patchen is fiercely individual, defiantly unique (also not unlike Miller himself). As Miller explains it, echoed by Jim Woodring in his brilliant introduction to this collection, Kenneth Patchen spent the last thirteen years of his life in debilitating condition, condemned to a bed in a small room, where he wrote, drew and painted with prolific fury. At the age of 26 he badly injured his back. He suffered greatly for 13 years, until he had an operation which relieved him of a great deal of his pain. A few years later another successful operation gave him further relief. Then in 1959 he had a "botched" operation, the one that made him a prisoner in his own home. He was only 47-years-old then and lived in pain until his death at the age of sixty.
The works in this collection, a series of picture-poems, seem to tell a great deal about the artist at this time. His drawings are surreal. They are at times cutesy and other times deranged, the characters' faces are warped and seem to be hiding pain. Crudely they are perhaps best comparable to the monsters of Hieronymus Bosch. And yet, in spite of it all, while Patchen (like Henry Miller) despised the evil drive in "civilization", he remained committed to seeing the goodness in the world. He remained a pacifist to his death and saw the world through childlike eyes. Perhaps it is that more than anything that tells us that Patchen was a real poet, a real humanist and a man of the world, a man with vision who suffered far too much in his time in this world.
It was in recently reading Henry Miller's Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, which included an essay on Patchen that I decided to give him another try. And, boy, am I glad I did!
Like other subjects of Miller's essays - Arthur Rimbaud, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Eugene Ionesco, the Comte de Lautréamont - Patchen is fiercely individual, defiantly unique (also not unlike Miller himself). As Miller explains it, echoed by Jim Woodring in his brilliant introduction to this collection, Kenneth Patchen spent the last thirteen years of his life in debilitating condition, condemned to a bed in a small room, where he wrote, drew and painted with prolific fury. At the age of 26 he badly injured his back. He suffered greatly for 13 years, until he had an operation which relieved him of a great deal of his pain. A few years later another successful operation gave him further relief. Then in 1959 he had a "botched" operation, the one that made him a prisoner in his own home. He was only 47-years-old then and lived in pain until his death at the age of sixty.
The works in this collection, a series of picture-poems, seem to tell a great deal about the artist at this time. His drawings are surreal. They are at times cutesy and other times deranged, the characters' faces are warped and seem to be hiding pain. Crudely they are perhaps best comparable to the monsters of Hieronymus Bosch. And yet, in spite of it all, while Patchen (like Henry Miller) despised the evil drive in "civilization", he remained committed to seeing the goodness in the world. He remained a pacifist to his death and saw the world through childlike eyes. Perhaps it is that more than anything that tells us that Patchen was a real poet, a real humanist and a man of the world, a man with vision who suffered far too much in his time in this world.
March 31, 2022
Quirky, beautiful picture-poems.
December 13, 2012
A wonderful collection of Patchen's. Great smattering that concentrates on his illustrated work.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews