About Kenneth Patchen
Kenneth Patchen (December 13, 1911 – January 8, 1972) was an American poet and novelist. He experimented with different forms of writing and incorporated painting, drawing, and jazz music into his works, which have been compared with those of William Blake and Walt Whitman. His father, Wayne, worked in the nearby steel mills of Youngstown, which Patchen would reference in his poems "The Orange Bears" and "May I Ask You a Question, Mr. Youngstown Sheet & Tube?" Patchen kept a diary from the age of twelve and read Dante, Homer, Burns, Shakespeare, and Melville. In 1926, while Patchen was still a teenager, his younger sister Kathleen was struck and killed by an automobile. Patchen's biographer wrote that he "developed in his fabulous fables, love poems, and picture poems a deep yet modern mythology that conveys a sense of compassionate wonder amidst the world's violence." Along with his frie.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.