Description
By 1949, Kenneth Patchen had become one of America’s most fiercely original literary voices — a poet who insisted that art must grapple with both the brutal realities and ecstatic possibilities of human life. In the postwar years, despite worsening health problems and increasing financial hardship, Patchen produced some of his most vibrant, searching work. Red Wine and Yellow Hair captures this moment: a mature poet, deeply wounded by the world, but unwilling to abandon beauty, tenderness, or revolutionary hope. Patchen’s commitment to fusing political rage, dreamlike imagery, and personal lyricism would influence generations of writers, from the Beats to the Black Mountain poets, even as he remained stubbornly outside any literary movement.
Red Wine and Yellow Hair is a collection of poems that blurs the line between despair and celebration. Published by James Laughlin’s New Directions, it reflects Patchen’s rare ability to blend intimate, romantic meditations with broader cries against injustice and cruelty. The poems range from playful to heartbreaking, often in the same breath. This 1949 first edition is increasingly hard to find, especially in its original dust jacket — a minimalist yellow-and-red design that now feels iconic in its starkness. Handling and age-toning to the jacket are typical, but copies like this one, still structurally sound and complete, are getting harder to locate. A key mid-period work for any Patchen collection, showing the poet at a crossroads between his earlier radicalism and his later, visionary experiments.
A powerful, transitional work from Kenneth Patchen, where sorrow and song collide on every page.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.