Word: patchen
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...Patchen's thunder roars at the cities ("black toads"), conformity ("Let us have madness openly"), war ("Democracy must be saved at all costs," he sneers), American art ("The arts of this American land/Stink in the air of mountains"), and indifference ("It is ordered now/That you push your beliefs/Up out of the filth high enough/For the inchworm to get their measure...
Lots and lots of Patchen is pretty erotic: sex cooked well. Here's where the world looks good, where all is clean and warm and endless. If the particular "not wholly unrewarding hour" you choose suits, his erotic stuff will appeal; yet it so much celebrates obvious things badly that it is tedious...
...Where Patchen shines, and indeed where also his Frisco friends shine, is in the chuckle-chuckle material, the looney funnies, the incredible fantasies. In the New Directions volume, Patchen accompanies about a dozen pieces, under the heading "Limericks," with the zaniest sketches you ever did see. They look like a doodle you did in English 10, only not tragic. They're funny...
...these "Limericks," Patchen writes of little men with wooden hair, playful street-cars, forgetful commuters, and a man two inches shorter than himself--all of them good, very good...
...undergraduate's Chino criticism might suggest, however, that Patchen shows us why much of the poetry written by the "Beat" boys of North Beach isn't so very successful. It's very hard to say America stinks more than once; maybe, if you're good at stringing words together, you can say it twice. But if you want to fill a volume of poetry you have to start thinking about why America stinks. The humor of Patchen indicates a great deal of talent; one could wish he'd forget his sophomoric, tragically bombastic approach to America and look around...