KENNETH PATCHEN: AN ELECTRIFIABLE INTERCOURSE WITH A FEMALE ALLIGATOR...

San Francisco poet Kenneth Patchen in 1957 with a collection of his painted books. The photograph was taken by the late photographer Harry Redl on the rooftop of his apartment house in San Francisco.
San Francisco poet Kenneth Patchen in 1957 with a collection of his painted books. The photograph was taken by the late photographer Harry Redl on the rooftop of his apartment house in San Francisco.

 

 

SO it is the duty of the artist to discourage all traces of shame

 

 To extend all boundaries

 

 To fog them in right over the plate

 

 To kill only what is ridiculous

 

 To establish problem

 

 To ignore solutions

 

 To listen to no one

 

 To omit nothing

 

 To contradict everything

 

 To generate the free brain

 

 To bear no cross

 

 To take part in no crucifixion

 

 To tinkle a warning when mankind strays

 

 To explode upon all parties

 

 To wound deeper than the soldier

 

 To heal this poor obstinate monkey once and for all

 

 

 

To verify the irrational

 

 To exaggerate all things

 

 To inhibit everyone

 

 To lubricate each proportion

 

 To experience only experience

 

 

 

To set a flame in the high air

 

 To exclaim at the commonplace alone

 

 To cause the unseen eyes to open

 

 

 

To admire only the absurd

 

 To be concerned with every profession save his own

 

 To raise a fortuitous stink on the boulevards of truth and beauty

 

 To desire an electrifiable intercourse with a female alligator

 

 To lift the flesh above the suffering

 

 To forgive the beautiful its disconsolate deceit

 

 

 

To flash his vengeful badge at every abyss

 

 

 

To HAPPEN

 

 

 

It is the artist’s duty to be alive

 

 To drag people into glittering occupations

 

 

 

To blush perpetually in gaping innocence

 

 To drift happily through the ruined race-intelligence

 

 To burrow beneath the subconscious

 

 To defend the unreal at the cost of his reason

 

 To obey each outrageous inpulse

 

 To commit his company to all enchantments.

 

 

 

 

Kenneth Patchen, The Journal of Albion Moonlight, 1941

 

 

 

 

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