He experimented with different forms of writing and incorporated painting, drawing, and jazz music into his works, which have been compared with those of William Blake and Walt Whitman.

"[8] 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.

[9] After leaving school, Patchen travelled across the country, taking itinerant jobs in such places as Arkansas, Louisiana, and Georgia.

[11] 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.

In 1937 Patchen suffered a permanent spinal injury, which was to give him pain, to varying degrees, for the rest of his life and which required multiple surgical procedures.

Then, in 1959, Patchen noted in the letter quoted above that another surgery at the Presbyterian Medical Center of San Francisco ended in disaster.

"[12] Though he was heavily sedated during the procedure, Patchen suspected that he had been dropped at some point;[1] in any event he was in considerably more pain afterward, and disabled for the rest of his life.

As his career progressed, he continued to push himself into more and more experimental styles and forms, developing, along with writers such as Langston Hughes and Kenneth Rexroth, what came to be known as jazz poetry.

After the appearance of his first book, he and Miriam traveled to the Southwest and then moved to Hollywood in 1938, where he tried, unsuccessfully, writing film scripts and worked for the WPA.

His next book of poems, First Will and Testament, drew the attention of James Laughlin, who was then launching New Directions Publishing as a student at Harvard.

[2] During the course of a long and varied career, he also tried his hand at writing experimental novels, such as The Journal of Albion Moonlight and The Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer, and the radio play The City Wears a Slouch Hat.

[17] In this essay, Miller wrote, "Patchen's pacifism is closely tied to what he sees as the loss of innocence in society, the corrupted human spirit, and is often expressed with animals.

[12][19] In the 1950s, Patchen became a major influence on the younger beat poets, including Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

[1] However, once the Beats' popularity grew, Patchen disliked being associated with them and was highly critical of their glorification of drug use and what he perceived to be a strong desire for media attention and fame.

[21] Kenneth Patchen Reads with Jazz in Canada (1959) was recorded in Vancouver the same week as a live performance for CBC Radio.

In 1964–65, the English composer David Bedford set an extract from Patchen's 1948 poem "In Memory of Kathleen" to classical music for the piece A Dream of the Lost Seven Stars.

[24] On January 21, 2008, El Records released the record Rebel Poets in America, which included poetry readings with jazz accompaniment by both Patchen and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, including such Patchen classics as "The Murder of Two Men by a Young Kid Wearing Lemon Colored Gloves" and "I Went to the City."

However, a few scholars have published critical books on Patchen, including Raymond Nelson, Herbert P. Hogue, and Larry R. Smith.

Notable book reviews provide a reasonably accurate gauge of the public response to Patchen's work when it was initially published.

"[1] In 1958, Patchen's Selected Poems and his book When We Were Here Together received significant praise from the reviewer Frederick Eckman in Poetry magazine.

Like the Times reviewer, Meltzer also compared Patchen's work to that of Walt Whitman and to the Bible and also to the writing of William Blake.

Although he did not achieve widespread fame during his lifetime, a small but dedicated following of fans and scholars continue to celebrate Patchen's art.

[32] In 2007, Gallery 324 in the Galleria at Erieview in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, held a Kenneth Patchen Festival reception on April 13.

Featured were Larry Smith of Bottom Dog Press, Doug Manson (SUNY, Buffalo) editor of Celery Flute Player (a Kenneth Patchen newsletter), numerous colorful Kenneth Patchen silkscreens on loan from the Trumbull Art Guild in Warren, and Douglas Paisley's paintings of The Journal of Albion Moonlight with text.

Liebler and the Magic Poetry Band from Detroit accompanied readings by poets Chris Franke, Jim Lang, and others.

Later that night, the festival moved uptown to The Barking Spider Tavern in the University Circle area for poetry readings accompanied by the Cleveland band The John Richmond All-Stars.