So please respect my view in this, and accept our heartiest wishes for yourself and your new wife…. And I hope (in a lighter vein) that your expected child will be as handsome a specimen as your beautiful kittens were… P.S. I’d like you to show this letter to Maurice Speiser with its little postscript to the effect that I think as a creature of tact he’s a good lawyer …. And (it may be oddly enough) I’m a lot more amused than other wise.”
Accompanied by a typed copy of Patchen’s letter to Speiser dated December 3, 1944, that reads:
“Dear Mr. Speiser: Since You know what’s coming I’ll get it coming right off. I am in a very bad way. I haven’t been out of bed in over three months. A job is out for my wife since I need attention of a sickman kind. I have been beating my brains out trying to pay the rent and keep alive. I don’t know another quarter where beating them would do any good. But I work. I’m half way through a big prose book, THE STORY OF A MAN; got another, MEMOIRS OF A SHY PORNOGRAPHER, coming up in print next January; my SELECTED POEMS are signed to come out in England in 1946; got two other books in the works. I don’t know a damn thing about getting along with people who might give me money, as you have experienced. I think that it would do you good to give me a nice assist up the hill. I think that in the nature of things there is that unfinished business between us. I can write a hundred pages for 250 dollars and I’ve got a hundred pages all set to knock off. My new books are important… you have some valuable experiences ahead of you there. You haven’t anything better to spend your money on. Whether you come through or not doesn’t mean a thing to me – actually I hope you don’t –* but my book is just waiting with its tongue hanging out. What you can give me is to come down some night with a good bottle of wine and ask me again if your shoes would fit me. I liked that. Sincerely yours, Kenneth Patchen *Because I’m away off somewhere and don’t want to be bothered one way or other, even as you don’t.”
Also accompanied by Speiser’s December 5, 1944 covering letter to Weber:
“This morning’s mail brings me a letter from Kenneth Patchen, copy of which I enclose herewith.
I must confess when I first read it my sympathies were not aroused. I am not sure they are yet.
However, do you think we are in a position to do something, or shall we forget about it?…”
Kenneth Patchen
Patchen published his first collection of poetry, Before the Brave, in 1936, after which he moved to California at the urging of San Francisco poet Kenneth Rexroth. Both men, who shared strong pacifist beliefs and an interest in jazz, exerted an influence over the Beat Poets whose fame would eclipse them. A prolific writer, Patchen also worked in other media, collaborating with John Cage and Charles Mingus, and creating more than 1000 “painted books” in which his poems were accompanied by paintings or drawings. Patchen’s work was elevated by a number of high-profile patrons and collaborators including Rexroth, poet e.e. cummings; and, in later years, The Doors frontman Jim Morrison, whose style he influenced.
Patchen’s enormous output is especially notable given his health problems that began in 1937 when he injured his spine. Subsequent surgeries only provided temporary relief and in 1959 a botched surgical procedure led to him spending the rest of his life disabled and nearly bedridden. Our letter discusses the extent of his disability and mentions that his wife and muse, Miriam née Oikemus Patchen (1914-2000). Patchen’s oeuvre includes a large volume of love poems to Miriam, including his well-known “23rd Street Runs Into Heaven.” Miriam, to whom he dedicated his more than 40 volumes, also assisted Patchen in the creation of his painted poems from his bed. After his death, she became a peace activist and was the subject of a short documentary Miriam Is Not Amused.
Maurice Speiser (1880-1948) was an attorney who represented Ernest Hemingway from 1929-1948, and a collector of contemporary art including works by Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Raoul Dufy, Juan Gris, and George Grosz.
Patchen’ interesting letter to Speiser, refers to an unfinished work entitled The Story Of A Man and the upcoming 1945 publication of his comic novel The Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer by San Francisco publisher New Directions, which released The Selected Poems of Kenneth Patchen the following year. In 1945, Patchen also published An Astonished Eye Looks Out of the Air and Outlaw of the Lowest Planet, possibly the “two other books in the works.”
Folded with some uneven age toning.
