1:2 Spring 1946

KENNETH PATCHEN

from Sleepers Awake

Kenneth Patchen’s experimentation with narrative technique and his attention to the expressive possibilities of typographical variation anticipate Chicago Review’s later interests in metafiction and concrete poetry (while it also contrasts with realist writers like James T. Farrell, whose work was included in the first volume). These interests, along with his politically-engaged, apocalyptic vision, also endeared Patchen to the Beats. Upon his death in 1972, City Lights Poets Theater held a memorial reading in Patchen’s honor; it was chronicled by editor Richard Hack in the Spring 1972 issue of Chicago Review. This selection from the Spring 1946 issue comes from the latter part of Patchen’s antinovel, Sleepers Awake, which was published in December 1946.

[DN, 1996]

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