Although Patchen has given previous evidence of an interest in jazz, the musical group that he works with, the Chamber Jazz Sextet, is often ignored by jazz critics.

Patchen's musicians are outsiders in established jazz circles, and Patchen himself has remained outside the San Francisco poetry group, maintaining a self-imposed isolation, even though his conversion to poetry-and-jazz is not as extreme or as sudden as it may first appear.

Patchen believes that the world is being destroyed by power-hungry and money-hungry people.

Beauty as well as love is redemptive, and Patchen preaches a kind of moral salvation.

In addition to his experiments in reading poetry to jazz, Patchen is beginning to use the figure of the modern jazz musician as a myth hero in the same way he used the figure of the private detective a decade ago.

This angry and exasperated stance which Patchen has maintained in his poetry for almost fifteen years has been successfully modulated into a kind of woe that is as effective as anger and still expresses his disapproval of the modern world.

'' Patchen is still the rebel, but he writes in a doleful, mournful tone.

" When Patchen recorded his jazz-poetry readings, one of the resulting albums drew praise from the poet John Ciardi who wrote that " Patchen's poetry is in many ways a natural for jazz accompaniment.

He is also notable as a supporter of Kenneth Patchen, whose Outlaw of the Lowest Planet he published in 1946, with an introduction by David Gascoyne and a preface by Alex Comfort.

In 1975, Houghton wrote for her husband, actor / writer Ken Jenkins, a children's story, " The Wizard's Daughter ," which is collected in the book, Two Beastly Tales, illustrated by Joan Patchen, her husband's first wife.

Patchen does read some of his earlier works to music, but he has written an entire book of short poems which seem to be especially suited for reading with jazz.

In order to write with authority either about musicians, or as a musician, Patchen would have to soft pedal his characteristically outspoken anger, and change ( at least for the purposes of this poetry ) from a revolutionary to a victim.

Patchen lived out the final years of his life with his wife in their modest home in Palo Alto where Patchen created many of his distinctive painted poems, produced while confined to his bed after his disastrous 1959 surgery inadvertenetly damaged his spine.

As his career progressed, Patchen 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.

'" Patchen also had a close, lifelong friendship with the poet E. E.

Patchen was also close peers with the West Coast poet Kenneth Rexroth who shared Patchen's interest in combining poetry readings with jazz accompaniment.

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.

In 1942 Patchen collaborated with the composer John Cage on the radio play The City Wears A Slouch Hat.

In the 1950s Patchen collaborated with jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus, reading his poetry with Mingus ' group, although no known recordings of the collaboration exists.

These recordings were released as Kenneth Patchen Reads with Jazz in Canada ( 1959 ), Selected Poems of Kenneth Patchen ( 1960 ), Kenneth Patchen Reads His Love Poems ( 1961 ), and The Journal of Albion Moonlight ( 1972 ).

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

On January 21, 2008, El Records released the record Rebel Poets in America, which included classic 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.

" Patchen made these recordings in collaboration with the musician Allyn Ferguson who composed and arranged jazz accompaniment for each individual poem and also led the jazz ensemble.

In the 1950s, Patchen received praise from the jazz critic Ralph Gleason for his jazz-poetry readings with the Chamber Jazz Sextet at the Blackhawk Club in San Francisco.

* Awash with Roses: Collected Love Poems of Kenneth Patchen, 1999

* Kenneth Patchen Reads with Jazz in Canada-with the Alan Neil Quartet, 1959, Folkways Records, FW09718

* Selected Poems & Paintings by Patchen, with Photographs and Biography

But the best known exploiters of the new medium are Kenneth Rexroth and Kenneth Patchen.

Rexroth and Patchen are far apart musically and poetically in their experiments.

( Downbeat did not mention the Los Angeles appearance of Patchen and the Sextet, although the engagement lasted over two months.

From the beginning of his career, Patchen has adopted an anti-intellectual approach to poetry.

Patchen envisions a Dark Kingdom which `` stands above the waters as a sentinel warning man of danger from his own kind ''.

These early experiments were evidently not altogether satisfying to Patchen.

so during the period approximately from 1941 to 1946, Patchen often used private detective stories as a myth reference, and the `` private eye '' as a myth hero.

most important to Patchen, he was a non-literary hero, and very contemporary.

In The Memoirs Of A Shy Pornographer ( 1945 ) Patchen exploited this national sentiment by making his hero, Albert Budd, a private detective.

Obviously, the `` private eye '' can have no more appeal for Patchen.

To fill the job of contemporary hero in 1955, Patchen needed someone else.

Henry Miller characterized Patchen as a `` man of anger and light ''.

I was reminded, amusedly, by a poem of Kenneth Patchen's called The Murder of Two Men by a Young Kid Wearing Lemon Colored Gloves, which Patchen himself read on a record against jazz background.

-- and said it sharply, not as in the Patchen bit, but as an order -- so I stopped my hand and looked at him.

* 1911 – Kenneth Patchen, American poet and painter ( d. 1972 )