Here, Kenneth Patchen writes to poet and critic Kenneth Rexroth about the New York Times refusing to run ads for (or to review) Patchen’s book of poems, Red Wine and Yellow Hair. Patchen imagines a range of protest—from picketing the Times building to “sending a bag of shit to everybody in ‘the public eye’,” and shares his frustration with his ailing health. Back problems, resulting from injury in 1937 and later complications from surgery, burdened Patchen throughout his life.
February 19, 1949
Dear Rexroth
Planned to send you a Red Wine and Yellow Hair as soon as it came out but ND was slow getting them to me and then sent only a couple; but no matter now, you did get one from Laughlin (I guess). Any rate I’m going to send you a signed one as soon as more reach me. Thanks for your letter about the poems. New York Times Book Section refused an ad on grounds that book is obscene: 3rd book of mine they’ve refused to run ads of. This time I got mad, decided to go down and picket with sign in front of Times Bldg: I CHALLENGE THE RIGHT OF THE NY TIMES TO BURN MY BOOKS. We were all set, taxi arranged for and all, when my back kicked into a sudden spell (had been pointing for trouble for some weeks, but I was sore enough to risk getting laid up in NY for weeks) and now I’m strapped up in bed, damit. So I could write open letters around…but everybody about is NY Times any way you look at them; figure the individual has got to fight as an individual or not at all. Why should I appeal to a crew of lice for anything. The bk, like my last four bks, won’t be reviewed at all in most places, and where it is, just the right lads will get it to attack what I have to say by declaring that it’s too bad or I have no ideas or discipline etc. Laughlin is off in Austria so…what the hell…Talk about censorship, what do you think of this nice under-the-table stuff of the Times? telling my publishers that my stuff is too dirty for their dear readers. Nobody knows. If they’d just try to suppress the books, but killing them off down where nobody has any inkling of what’s going on. If I had money for a lawyer, I’d sue the bastards for 50 thou and give the dough to something good like sending a bag of shit to everybody in “the public eye”. Just got your New British Poets and think you did a very fine job in a difficult field. Sorry you didn’t include Hugo Manning, who’s a pretty bitter shot-up Eng. soldier, and in letters a very nice fellow. His poems are as good as most of those over there…my hunch the people over there are too clever to be really good poets, not unfriendly enough.
Best,
Kenneth
From Selected Correspondence of Kenneth Patchen. Patchen, Kenneth, Allen Frost, and Larry R. Smith. Huron, Ohio: Bottom Dog Press, 2012.