If reading the book before seeing the movie was mandatory, hardly anyone would have seen Jim Jarmusch's lovely film by the same name. Patterson is clearly an important work of 20th century American poetry and is a fascinating text with a lot of beauty in it. Would recommend only if you're interested in this particular time and place, history of poetry, are using it as inspiration for your own freaky writing projects (@Jarmusch), or want to read the book that inspired that movie with Adam Driver in it.