Patchen's An Astonished Eye Looks Out of the Air

Favorite lines from Kenneth Patchen's An Astonished Eye Looks Out of the Air (1945):

The poems were printed in a conscientious objectors' camp, red and black typography layered over on white and olive-green pages with white type. The symbolism and motifs remind me of a modernist version of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience.

from "The Dimensions of the Morning":
I will allow you respect for
Red apples and countries warm
With the races of men; peep pver
The transom at China if you like;
But I will have no hatred or fear
Entering this poem.

from "A Letter to the Young Men":
When the days grow teeth at last and games
Are done; when sunset stills our eyes and search
Is at an end--the ways all blocked, the wind's
Majestic house gone slack to the crush
Of quarreling planes in all their blue skies...

from "The Origin of Baseball":
There weren't enough birds around
And the hills had a silly look
When we got on top of one.
The girls in heaven, however, thought
Nothing of asking to see his watch
Like you would want someone to tell
A joke--"Time," they'd say,"what's
That mean--time?", laughing with the edges
Of their white mouths, like a flutter of paper
In a madhouse.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

So he wanted to throw something.
And he picked up a baseball.

from "'Keep Life'":
Town on the back of a hairy
Fish.



from "'Joined Together by the Rule of Peaceful Love'":
Their bodies writhe as that mating
Frees bulls down lanes
Of sweating roses. But a wall
Circles some grim town; and the
Reason for winter
Puts hooves on the sparrow.

from "The Naked Land":
A beast stands at my eye. //
I cook my sense in a dark fire.

from "What is the Beautiful?":
The narrowing line.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Unrest in the outer districts.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Perhaps the shapes will open.