NOTES
All of these images are the result of reading four New Directions editions of Kenneth Patchen's Painted Picture Poems (his term): Hallelujah Anyway (1967); Aflame and Afun of Walking Faces (1970), Poemscapes and A Letter to God (1958) and Wonderings (1971). The first and last of these titles - along with But Even So - have recently been re-issued by New Directions as The Walking-Away World.
Images result from a direct, moving encounter between the book itself and the in-built camera on a lap top, and constitute a method of reading I hope to explore further.
All of these books - and my sequence above - could be seen to imply Patchen thought and worked primarily in black and white, whereas in fact an exuberant sense of colour was central to all of the Painted Picture Poems. Karl Young's excellent Light & Dust site offers a sample of Patchen in colour.
The text for the title of this post is from a poem reproduced on the cover of Hallelujah Anyway. It reads in its entirety:
LOVE (WHICH INCLUDES POETRY) IS TO SCIENCE AS THE FREE & BEAUTIFUL CATCHINGS OF A CHILD ARE TO THE VILE AND UNRETURNING THROES OF THE HANGMAN.
