“Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.”
Work
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.<br> <br> 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.
Quotes
Showing 1-21 of 21
Kenneth Patchen
Canonical work source
“Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.”
“Stephen kissed me in the spring, Robin in the fall, But Colin only looked at me And never kissed at all. Stephen’s kiss was lost in jest, Robin’s lost in play, But the kiss in Colin’s eyes H...”
“Although, I admit, I desire, Occasionally, some backtalk From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain: A certain minor light may still Lean incandescent Out of kitchen table or chair As if a...”
“Harlem What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrup...”
“It is strange how often a heart must be broken Before the years can make it wise.”
“Not easy to state the change you made. If I'm alive now, I was dead, Though, like a stone, unbothered by it.”
“I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go.”
“Always in the middle of our bloodiest battles you lay down your arms like flowering mines to conqueror me home.”
“By daily dying, I have come to be.”
“End with an image and don't explain.”
“The poem must resist the intelligence Almost successfully.”
“The Long Hill I must have passed the crest a while ago And now I am going down-- Strange to have crossed the crest and not to know, But the brambles were always grabbing at the hem of my gow...”
“Beyond myself, somewhere, I wait for my arrival.”
“What is madness but nobility of the soul at odds with circumstance.”
“The Waking I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being da...”
“The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.”
“The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper, Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars Letting in the light, peephole after peephole--- A bonewhite light, like death, behind all thing...”
“I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.”
“I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks...”
“In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: “Live in the layers, not on the litter.” Though I lack the art to decipher i...”
“The Layers I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I...”