One of the most path-breaking and creatively radical poets of the San Francisco Renaissance, Philip Whalen was part of the 1955 Six Gallery reading where the West Coast Beat movement famously began. Working alongside Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Jack Kerouac, Whalen developed a conversational and visually unorthodox style that is unique in contemporary poetry. His lifelong engagement with the impermanent and sensuous, concerns deepened by his commitment to Zen Buddhism, are on rich display here, along with his warm humor and original illustrations. This Collected Poems rightfully places Whalen among the foremost poets of his time, offering readers a truly major body of American poetic work.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
A friend and inspiration to Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, the Oregon-born California Beat poet Whalen (1923–2002) also played a serious role in the history of American Buddhism, traveling to Japan, then becoming a Zen monk in 1974. Whalen's copious pre-1967 writings make up the bulk of this volume: often they reflect a first-thought best-thought aesthetic, with scenes from West Coast nature and San Francisco bohemia, ecstatic and disillusioned jottings and quips about love, sex, drugs, literature and America, along with holographs and drawings. The work Whalen did in Japan tells a different story. The last and best of his long sequences, the 60-page Scenes from the Capital (1969), combines a Ginsberg-like flow with more considered reflections on travel, alienation and the poet's own mind: If you want something hold out an empty hand, Whalen advises; If you want a poem find a blank page. His move into more dedicated Zen practice slowed downhis verse: How to explain that everything is unimaginably splendid/ And horrible? an ode from 1979 inquires. Beat compleatists, seekers of Buddhist poetry and anyone else drawn to the history of countercultural writing should find much in this big book to like, though its sheer bulk (and price) may be a deterrent.(Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Rothenberg has done an exemplary job with The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen.... He includes a short biography of the poet, as well as an extensive bibliography, various of Whalen's own prefaces, (Gary) Snyder's astute and heartfelt foreword and a thoughtful essay by poet Leslie Scalapino. He's even reproduced the tables of contents of Whalen's original collections."--Lewis MacAdams, Los Angeles Times
"This is a beautiful book."--Jordan Davis, The Nation
"Presenting some of the most significant poetry of the postwar era, The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen should boost Whalen's cultural status to the level of recognition he deserves, for it reveals an acute introspective power unequaled in the writing of the period."--Dale Smith, Rain Taxi
"Philip Whalen is a great American poet. Some--too few--readers have known this since the mid 1950s, when his poems first appeared in little magazines and small-press books. In publishing The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen, Wesleyan gives the world at large this incomparable poet, and major literary event. ...(Y)ou will enjoy Whalen's poems, and you may come to love them."--William Corbett, The Boston Phoenix
"This is a beautiful book."--Jordan Davis, The Nation
"Presenting some of the most significant poetry of the postwar era, The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen should boost Whalen's cultural status to the level of recognition he deserves, for it reveals an acute introspective power unequaled in the writing of the period."--Dale Smith, Rain Taxi
"Philip Whalen is a great American poet. Some--too few--readers have known this since the mid 1950s, when his poems first appeared in little magazines and small-press books. In publishing The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen, Wesleyan gives the world at large this incomparable poet, and major literary event. ...(Y)ou will enjoy Whalen's poems, and you may come to love them."--William Corbett, The Boston Phoenix
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The Beat Louvre,
This review is from: The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen (Wesleyan Poetry Series) (Hardcover)
This remarkable collection gathers the full range of work from one of the 20th century's most unpretentious experimenters with the form and matter of poetry. Granted, 800 pages is a lot of anyone, even a poet as great and under-read as Whalen, and the gain in information comes with a corresponding loss in shape. Whalen's refusal to separate writing from the business-as-usual work of living gives his poems their special tension--the "nerve movie" that's at once transcription of mind moving and competitive bid to be Art--but also invites sameness and slack, a problem more apparent here than in previous collections, especially On Bear's Head, where the batting average dazzles. Reference-wise though, having this book is like owning a wing of the Beat Louvre, and I wouldn't trade it for all of Mexico City and its blues.
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Inside This Book
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San Francisco, New York, The Song of Amergin, Margaret Gridley, Viet Nam, The White Goddess, Contents of Whalen Books, Western Civilization, The Dalles, Henry James, Anthony Williams, Follow Law, Gertrude Stein, Allegorical Painting, United States, Thank God, Kamo River, Hasleton Brasier, Fred Merkel, Stinson Beach, Suzuki Roshi, Santa Monica, The Slop Barrel, Preiddeu Annwm, White River Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
slop barrel Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
San Francisco, New York, The Song of Amergin, Margaret Gridley, Viet Nam, The White Goddess, Contents of Whalen Books, Western Civilization, The Dalles, Henry James, Anthony Williams, Follow Law, Gertrude Stein, Allegorical Painting, United States, Thank God, Kamo River, Hasleton Brasier, Fred Merkel, Stinson Beach, Suzuki Roshi, Santa Monica, The Slop Barrel, Preiddeu Annwm, White River Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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