Editing Kenneth Patchen (section)

== Early years ==
===Background===
Patchen was born in [[Niles, Ohio]]. His father, Wayne, worked in the nearby [[steel mill]]s of [[Youngstown, Ohio|Youngstown]], which Patchen would reference in his poems "The Orange Bears" and "May I Ask You a Question, Mr. [[Youngstown Sheet & Tube]]?"<ref name="Smith">[[Larry R. Smith|Smith, L. R.]] (2000). ''Kenneth Patchen: Rebel Poet in America''. Huron, Ohio: Bottom Dog Press. pp. 67–81. {{ISBN|0-933087-59-4}}, {{ISBN|978-0-933087-59-0}}.</ref> Patchen kept a diary from the age of twelve and read [[Dante]], [[Homer]], [[Robert Burns|Burns]], [[Shakespeare]], and [[Herman Melville|Melville]].<ref>{{cite web |url = http://www.rooknet.net/beatpage/writers/patchen.html |title = Writers: Kenneth Patchen |publisher = The Beat Page |access-date = April 3, 2012 }}</ref>

{{Blockquote|quote=<poem>I remember you would put daisies
On the windowsill at night and in
The morning they'd be so covered with soot
You couldn't tell what they were anymore.</poem>
|source=''from'' "The Orange Bears",<ref>{{cite web |url = http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15320 |title = The Orange Bears|author= Patchen, Kenneth |publisher = Academy of American Poets |year = 1957 |access-date = April 3, 2012 }}</ref>
<br>''Red Wine and Yellow Hair'' (1949)}}

His family included his mother Eva, his sisters Ruth, Magel, Eunice, and Kathleen, and his brother Hugh.<ref>{{cite web |url = http://www.oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt6w10292v;style=oac4;view=dsc |title = Magel and Ruth Patchen Collection |publisher = Online Archive of California |access-date = April 3, 2012 }}</ref> In 1926, while Patchen was still a teenager, his younger sister Kathleen was struck and killed by an automobile. Her death deeply affected him and he would later pay tribute to her in his 1948 poem "In Memory of Kathleen."<ref>Smith, L.R. (2000) pp 12,16.</ref>

Patchen first began to develop his interest in literature and poetry while he was in high school, and the ''[[New York Times]]'' published his first poem while he was still in college. He attended [[Alexander Meiklejohn]]'s Experimental College (which was part of the [[University of Wisconsin]]), in [[Madison, Wisconsin]], for one year, starting in 1929. Patchen had a football scholarship there but had to drop out when he injured his back.<ref>Williams, J. (1999). Introduction to ''Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer''. New York, New Directions. {{ISBN|0-8112-1411-7}}.</ref> After leaving school, Patchen travelled across the country, taking itinerant jobs in such places as Arkansas, [[Louisiana]], and [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]].<ref>Smith, L. R. (2000). pp 35, 36, 57.</ref>

=== Marriage ===

Next, Patchen moved to the East Coast, where he lived in [[New York City]] and [[Boston]]. While in Boston, in 1933, he met [[Miriam Patchen|Miriam Oikemus]] at a friend's Christmas party. At the time, Miriam was a freshman at [[Massachusetts State College]] in [[Amherst, Massachusetts|Amherst]]. The two kept in touch, and Patchen started sending her the first of many love poems. They soon fell in love and decided to get married. First Patchen took her to meet his parents in Youngstown. They were married on June 28, 1934, in nearby [[Sharon, Pennsylvania]].<ref>Smith, L. R. (2000). pp 67–81.</ref>

During the 1930s the couple moved frequently between New York City's [[Greenwich Village]] and [[California]], as Patchen struggled to make a living as a writer. Despite his constant struggle, his strong relationship with Miriam supported him and would continue to support him through the hardships that plagued him for most of his adult life. The couple moved to a cottage in [[Old Lyme, Connecticut]], in 1947. In 1951, a few years after befriending the West Coast poet [[Kenneth Rexroth]], the Patchens moved to the West Coast, living first in [[San Francisco]] and then moving to [[Palo Alto, California|Palo Alto]] in 1957.

=== Health problems ===

In 1937 Patchen suffered a permanent [[Spinal-cord injury|spinal injury]], which was to give him [[chronic pain|pain]], to varying degrees, for the rest of his life and which required multiple surgical procedures. In a letter to a friend from 1960, Patchen explained, "In 1956 a spinal fusion [operation] (second of two operations) gave me relief and mobility (& for the first time I was able to go about giving readings, and so on."<ref name="Frost">Frost, Allen, ed. (2012). ''Selected Correspondence of Kenneth Patchen''. Huron, Ohio: Botton Dog Press.</ref>

By this point, he and his wife had moved from San Francisco to Palo Alto to be closer to the [[Palo Alto Medical Foundation|Palo Alto Clinic]], where both were receiving treatment. Then, in 1959, Patchen noted in the letter quoted above that another surgery at the Presbyterian Medical Center of San Francisco ended in disaster. He wrote, "During [a] surgical procedure for my throat, and while under complete anesthesia, I suffered another slipped disc."<ref name="Frost" /> Though he was heavily sedated during the procedure, Patchen suspected that he had been dropped at some point;<ref name="Smith" /> in any event he was in considerably more pain afterward, and disabled for the rest of his life. In 1963, he sued his surgeon for medical malpractice and lost.<ref name="Smith" />

Around this time, [[Jim Morrison]] paid for the publication of the ''Mt. Alverno Review'', a poetry anthology edited by his friend, [[Michael C. Ford]], to help Patchen with medical expenses.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rrIQAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Mt.+Alverno+Review%22+%22jim+morrison%22+%22kenneth+patchen%22|isbn=9780688088293|title=Break on Through: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison|year=1991|publisher=Morrow}}</ref>

=== Politics ===

Throughout his life Patchen was a fervent [[pacifist]], as he made clear in much of his work. He was strongly opposed to the involvement of the United States in [[World War II]]. In his own words, "I speak for a generation born in one war and doomed to die in another."<ref name=Miller>{{cite news |last = Miller |first = James H. |url = http://www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision/2011/12/12/kenneth-patchen-centennial-poetry-still-resonates |title = Kenneth Patchen Centennial: Poetry That Still Resonates |newspaper = San Francisco Bay Guardian |date = December 12, 2011 |access-date = April 3, 2012 }}</ref> This controversial view, coupled with his physical immobilization, may have prevented wider recognition or success beyond what some consider a "cult" following.

=== Final years ===
Patchen lived out the final years of his life with his wife in their modest home on 2340 Sierra Court, in Palo Alto, where Patchen created many of his distinctive painted poems, produced while confined to his bed after his disastrous 1959 surgery inadvertently damaged his spine. He died in Palo Alto, on January 8, 1972.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.concentric.net/~lndb/patchen/patchclr.htm |title=Painted and Silkscreened Poems by Kenneth Patchen |publisher=Concentric.net |year=1976 |access-date=April 3, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120414191253/http://www.concentric.net/~lndb/patchen/patchclr.htm |archive-date=April 14, 2012 }}</ref> His wife, Miriam, died in March 2000, also in Palo Alto.