20th Century Precursors

The Journal of Albion Moonlight

The Journal of Albion Moonlight

Kenneth Patchen Mount Vernon, N.Y.: Walpole Printing Office, 1941. Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

Kenneth Patchen's experimental verse and his fiction, with its proletarian themes, had a major influence on the early Beat aesthetic. Patchen was never highly regarded among mainstream critics, but it was the offbeat, censored, experimental writers, musicians, and artists that most interested the Beats. According to Kenneth Rexroth, Patchen was the most popular poet on American college campuses during World War II. In the fifties he performed a series of poetry readings accompanied by an avant-garde jazz band, performances that were well attended by the Beat crowd. His early anti-war stance, written in response to the atrocities of World War II, was embraced by the Vietnam war protesters in the late sixties.

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