Kenneth Patchen (December 13, 1911January 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. 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 friend and peer Kenneth Rexroth, he was a central influence on the San Francisco Renaissance and the Beat Generation. Early years Background Patchen was born in Niles, Ohio. 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. His family included his mother Eva, his sisters Ruth, Magel, Eunice, and Kathleen, and his brother Hugh. In 1926, while Patchen was still a teenager, his younger sister Kathleen was struck and killed by an automobile. Her death deeply affected him and he would later pay tribute to her in his 1948 poem "In Memory of Kathleen." Patchen first began to develop his interest in literature and poetry while he was in high school, and the New York Times published his first poem while he was still in college. He attended Alexander Meiklejohn's Experimental College (which was part of the University of Wisconsin), in Madison, Wisconsin, for one year, starting in 1929. Patchen had a football scholarship there but had to drop out when he injured his back. After leaving school, Patchen travelled across the country, taking itinerant jobs in such places as Arkansas, Louisiana, and Georgia. Marriage Next, Patchen moved to the East Coast, where he lived in New York City and Boston. While in Boston, in 1933, he met Miriam Oikemus at a friend's Christmas party. At the time, Miriam was a freshman at Massachusetts State College in Amherst. The two kept in touch, and Patchen started sending her the first of many love poems. They soon fell in love and decided to get married. First Patchen took her to meet his parents in Youngstown. They were married on June 28, 1934, in nearby Sharon, Pennsylvania. During the 1930s the couple moved frequently between