Like his college roommate Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen took both poetry and Zen seriously. He became friends with Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Michael McClure, and played a key role in the explosive poetic revolution of the '50s and '60s. Celebrated for his wisdom and good humor, Whalen transformed the poem for a generation. His writing, taken as a whole, forms a monumental stream of consciousness (or, as Whalen calls it, "continuous nerve movie") of a wild, deeply read, and fiercely independent American—one who refuses to belong, who celebrates and glorifies the small beauties to be found everywhere he looks. This long-awaited Selected Poems is a welcome opportunity to hear his influential voice again.

Overtime: Selected Poems (Penguin Poets)

Literature & Fiction

Whalen, Philip

United States

Penguin Publishing Group

This is an important book. Until now, the poetry of Philip Whalen could be found only in Little Magazines or in editions so small they quickly sold out. On Bear's Head is a one-volume collection of nearly all his work, more than 20 years of it. One of this century's most brilliant poets is at last accessible to all. Whalen's poetry is not difficult. Great poetry never is. Anybody can understand exactly what is being said, though it may take several readings to appreciate how deeply considered his "meanings" are. The poems are wise, not smart. They aren't grim. He reaches us, mostly, through wit and a cranky insistence upon joy. Most important, he makes poetry of the actual language of the street. (Lew Welch, San Francisco Chronicle, 1969)

On Bear's Head

Harcourt

McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader

McGuffey, William Holmes

History

Franklin Classics

The literary journals of a key figure in both the Beat and San Francisco Renaissance movements of the New American Poetry, and an ordained Zen Buddhist priest\nPhilip Whalen (1923–2002) authored twenty collections of verse, more than twenty broadsides, two novels, a huge assemblage of autobiographical literary journals, nine or ten experimental prose works, and dozens of critical essays, lectures, commentaries, introductions, prefaces, and interviews. But he came to regard his literary journals as his most important prose legacy.\nWhalen’s literary work represents a significant turn in American letters, as he and his closest colleagues immersed themselves in East Asian literature and religion, reinvigorating strikingly new linguistic and aesthetic paths for North American writers and artists. However, until now Whalen’s forty-plus years of journals—sixty small eight-by-six-inch notebooks—have been largely inaccessible, archived in the rare book and manuscript library at the University of California, Berkeley, undigitized and unavailable online. Thus, the publication of a critical scholarly edition of Whalen’s journals and notebooks constitutes an important literary event and an invaluable resource for scholars, teachers, poets, and lay readers who follow twentieth-century North American poetry.

Bowed Some, Chanted a Little: Philip Whalen's Zen Journals and the San Francisco Renaissance (Modern and Contemporary Poetics)

Biographies & Memoirs

University Alabama Press

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.

The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

Poetry

Wesleyan University Press

The kindness of strangers: Poems, 1969-1974 (Writing series ; 33)

distributed by Book People

Off the Wall

Four Seasons Foundation

Heavy Breathing Poems 1967 1980

Scenes of Life at the Capital

Written from 1969 to 1971, West Coast Beat poet Philip Whalen's "Scenes of Life at the Capital" is a lasting testament to the ambition, range, powers, and devotion of this crucially important American voice. Positioned among the Buddhist temples of Kyoto, Whalen looks across the ocean to address the new frontiers, political problems, and transformative hopes of the United States of the 1960s—so much of which still resonates today. In this new edition—with a deep and enlightening afterword by David Brazil—Whalen's poem is further cemented as a fundamental work in American literary history.

Scenes of Life At The Capital

Grey Fox Press

Enough said: Fluctuat nec mergitur : poems 1974-1979

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