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66th out of 134 books
—
69 voters
The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen
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 life...more
Hardcover, 871 pages
Published
January 1st 2008
by Wesleyan University Press
(first published December 28th 2007)
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Could Philip be the oddest of the beats? He has works of all shapes and sizes. A lot of great short poems. He seems (this is an off the top of my head thought) to be buddhist more in approach than in exposition, which I think makes his forms and leaps really interesting and makes his work have a great mysterious technical edge on his contemporaries (and ours? His ability to seem removed from his work is not antiseptic or overwrought). The problems with the book for me are: that Leslie Scalapino...more
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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 a...more
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I borrowed a copy of ON BEAR'S HEAD years ago from a friend and simply REFUSED to return it! Actually he had a couple of copies, but my theft is beside the point. How easy is it to LOVE Whalen's poems? His work is something I put on like a pair of comfortable socks, or shirt, OR UNDERWEAR! Why NOT UNDERWEAR is my question!? The BEST poetry SHOULD BE like a nice pair of underwear, holding your genitals in the harsh angle of the fucking undertow we call present day Planet Earth. Whalen is for Love...more
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Jun 18, 2009
Timothy Green
added it
If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all...
I realize that Whalen was probably a better poet
than some of his other beat contemporaries
than some of his other beat contemporaries
Just got this in the post yesterday. One of my favourite poets. Wanna read everything!!!
plum tree sits on my head when reading whalen
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Philip Whalen was born in Portland, Oregon on October 20, 1923. He roomed with future poets Gary Snyder and Lew Welch's at Reed College in Oregon.
Whalen did not pursue a career in poetry, but fell into it after Snyder asked him to take part in the famous Six Gallery poetry reading in 1955. A good portrait of Whalen, Snyder's slightly older and chubbier Zen-poet friend, appears in 'The Dharma Bums'...more
More about Philip Whalen...
Whalen did not pursue a career in poetry, but fell into it after Snyder asked him to take part in the famous Six Gallery poetry reading in 1955. A good portrait of Whalen, Snyder's slightly older and chubbier Zen-poet friend, appears in 'The Dharma Bums'...more
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