The Dove walks with sticky feet
Upon the green crowns of the almond tree,
Its feathers smeared over with warmth
Like honey
That dips lazily down into the shadow ...


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Kenneth Patchen on poetic integrity

The poet should resist all efforts to categorize him as a painted monkey on a stick, not for personal reasons alone, but because it does damage to poetry itself. I told you about the actual as opposed to the fictional situation . . . to demonstrate by case and example the fraudulent and cheap nature of the thing which has spawned here when the cameras of Life set up and staged their poetry-with-jazz sideshow in February [Life and Time had each done stories on poetry-jazz. ], along with half a dozen other "cultural evenings with the bearded and besandled denizens of San Francisco’s lower-Bohemia" — including a striptease to poetry . . . I can only hope that some of these people will come to their senses and realize that poets have something better to do than become exhibits in a tricked-out freakshow. 

 
with Chet Baker