From the appearance in 1936 of Kenneth Patchen’s first book, the voice of this great poet has been protesting war and social injustice, satirizing the demeaning and barbarous inanities of our culture—entrancing us with an inexhaustible flow of humor and fantasy. With directness and simplicity, he has restored the exaltation of romantic love to its ancient bardic place beside an awareness of God’s living presence among all men.

For this collection, assembled in his fifty-fourth year, Kenneth Patchen has drawn from the contents of twelve of his books. It provides the reader in many cases with the texts of poems no longer available even in rare editions.