Literary Nonficton. Poetry History & Criticism. Letters. Edited by Allen Frost, SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE includes photographs and brief biographies of Patchen's correspondents. They include Harvey Breit, Alex Comfort, E.E. Cummings, Robert Duncan, James T. Farrell, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, James Laughlin, James Boyer May, Alexander Meiklejohn, Henry Miller, Henry Moe, Harriet Monroe, Lewis Mumford, Alan Neil, Miriam Patchen, Henry Rago, Kenneth Rexroth, Harry Roskolenko, Isabel Smith-Stein, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, Leon Trotsky, Louis Untermeyer, Amos Wilder, Thomas Wolfe, and Jasper Wood."When reading Kenneth Patchen, a face stares back out of the text. His very human gaze scrutinizes us and our world with such intensity because he is looking for all the beauty despite such apparent ugliness. The SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE reveals the hardships and pain Patchen endured in this search, bolstered by his muse Miriam. Reading Patchen is a profound literary experience, an absolute delighting in humanity's possibilities yet also a despondence, sometimes even anger, over our shortcomings. These themes play themselves out here in Patchen's impassioned letters to such friends and colleagues as Henry Miller, E.E. Cummings, Wallace Stevens, et. al. To read this correspondence is to be astonished by Patchen's insatiable quest for all that is good in life, one that led him from proletarianism to concretism to jazz to painted poems. Embrace hope, all ye who enter here."--Eckhard Gerdes

Love and the Turning Year includes a selection from the Yueh Fu-folk songs from the Six Dynasties Period (fourth-fifth centuries A.D.). Most of the songs are simple, erotic lyrics. Some are attributed to legendary courtesans, while others may have been sung at harvest festivals or marriage celebrations. In addition to the folk songs, Rexroth offers a wide sampling of Chinese verse: works by 60 different poets, from the third century to our own time. Rexroth always translated Chinese poetry-as he said-"solely to please myself." And he created, with remarkable success, English versions which stand as poems in their own right.