Kenneth Patchen
Panels for the Walls of Heaven, 1946
Berkeley: Bern Porter
One of 150 copies. With covers hand-painted by Patchen.
670
Square octavo. 67pp. Title page in red and blue, with subsequent text and illustrations only in the latter. The monochromatic printing grants a feeling of resistance to the usual tropes...
Square octavo. 67pp. Title page in red and blue, with subsequent text and illustrations only in the latter. The monochromatic printing grants a feeling of resistance to the usual tropes of book production, in a manner later championed by the artist's books of the 1960s and 70s. The color bleeds between Patchen's rhythmic writing and his artwork, which itself oscillates between styles as visually dense as Surrealism and as angular as Expressionism. There is throughout a rejection of outright symbolism and representation, certainly inline with Patchen's Beat associations. Each copy in the edition received a unique cover design; this shows a abstract, animalistic figure against a background entirely of black save a single, moon-like circle of white. Covers moderately rubbed, though impact to painting is unobtrusive to its main elements, toning to endpapers, else very good.