Until last year, Patchen had been pretty efficiently ignored by the so-called literary establishment. Its critics had seen him as a naive romantic, or as a capricious experimenter, or as some sort of social-protest poet vaguely associated with the 1930's. Even the most generous praise was usually grudging, as if Patchen had somehow won his place through sheer wrongheaded persistence….

["The Collected Poems"] is a remarkable volume, although it is difficult to describe. One could say that it contains the animal honesty of Whitman, and the desperate exaltation of Hart Crane, and the simple delight in sense perception of D. H. Lawrence. One could also say that it contains the wrath of the Old Testament prophets, as well as the Christ-like simplicity and sweetness of St. Francis. But one would be missing the really important point—that the book is many voices, all of them Patchen's, all of...