Best known as a member of the Beat Generation,
Philip Whalen has also been associated with such
other movements as the San Francisco Renaissance and language poetry. Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1923, Whalen grew up in The Dalles, a
small town on the Columbia River. He came from
a working-class background and joined the army
air force soon after graduating from high school.
After World War II, he attended Reed College on
the G.I. Bill where he met gary snyder and lew
welch and was first acknowledged as a poet by
William Carlos Williams, who had come to Reed
on a lecture tour. He was also introduced to Zen
Buddhism at this time. Whalen graduated in 1951,
his senior thesis being a book of poems.
Whalen spent the 1950s and 1960s traveling
up and down the West Coast, spending considerable
time in San Francisco where he participated in the
Six Gallery poetry reading in 1955, meeting allen
ginsberg, jack kerouac, and michael mcclure.
An important year for Whalen was 1960. His first
two books of poetry, Like I Say and Memoirs of an
Interglacial Age, were published, and he was included in Donald Allen’s The new american
poetry, 1945–1960. At about this time, Whalen
wrote “Since You Ask Me,” his memorable statement of poetics that was originally meant as a press
release for a reading tour which he made back East
with Michael McClure. It epitomizes his method
of writing by claiming that “poetry is a picture or
graph of a mind moving, which is a world body
being here and now which is history . . . and you.”
In 1966, at the suggestion of Snyder, Whalen
first traveled to Japan where he started to practice
Zen Buddhism more regularly. He also wrote prolifically in the 1960s, including three semiautobiographical novels that explore relationships between
men and women and question the artist’s relation
to society: You Didn’t Even Try (1967), Imaginary
Speeches for a Brazen Head (1972), and The Diamond Noodle (1980). On Bear’s Head, Whalen’s
first collected poems came out in 1969. Significant
poems from this period include “The War Poem for
diane di prima,” a protest poem of the Vietnam
War, and the longer work, Scenes of Life at the Capital, about his life in Kyoto amid palaces, temples,
and cafés. Returning to the United States in the
early 1970s, Whalen first stayed in Bolinas, north
of San Francisco, where friends and fellow poets
such as Donald Allen and joanne kyger lived.
Soon Whalen wanted to return to the city, and
Richard Baker–Roshi invited him to move to the
San Francisco Zen Center. He became a monk in
1973, was given dharma transmission in 1987, and
became abbot of the Hartford Street Zen Center in
1991, retiring from that position in 1996. Whalen
remained as a resident teacher there until his death
in 2002. Even though he published less as his Buddhist responsibilities as practitioner and teacher increased, several major volumes of poetry appeared
in the 1980s and 1990s: Heavy Breathing (1983), a
collected volume of poems that was published in
the 1970s; Canoeing Up Cabarga Creek (1996), a
selection of Buddhist poems; Some of These Days
(1999), poems from the 1970s and 1980s; and
Overtime (1999), a final volume of selected poetry. Off the Wall, a collection of interviews with
Whalen and an important source of information
about his life and work, was published in 1978.
Whalen’s poetry is known for its wit, humor,
and casual, conversational style. His poems also
exhibit an experimental and open form. Placement
of the poem on the page is important, including
the dynamic use of line breaks to graph the movement of the mind in time and space. Similar to
other Beat writers, Whalen faithfully kept journals
Philip Whalen, in his apartment in San Francisco,
1965. (courtesy of Larry Keenan)
and notebooks, and many of his poems are created from journal entries, typed, rearranged, and
sometimes edited and considered by some critics to
exhibit a collage technique. He is also known for
his elegant calligraphy and the drawings that often
accompany poems when published as reproduced
from his notebooks. Highgrade is a volume devoted
to what he called his doodles and such short calligraphed poems.
Whalen’s poetry may be a challenging read due
to the way he combines levels of language, including slang and colloquialisms, quotations from authors whom he is reading, overheard conversations,
memories, and ambient sounds, sometimes without
indicating sources. His poetry is also intellectually demanding in its exploration of philosophical
questions, often from a Buddhist point of view,
and the wide range of ideas from the arts, sciences,
and Western and Eastern culture that he includes
in his poems. Some critics have claimed that his
contemplative and personal poetry is lacking in
drama, as he explores how the mind perceives the
outer world and then records and transmits that
perception through the poem. However, Whalen
also addresses political issues, especially how the
poet can survive in America and how poetry itself can bring change to a society of consumerism
and conformity. For example, his poem “Chanson d’Outre Tombe” addresses the outsider status
of the Beat poet directly, evidence that although
Whalen has both denied and affirmed his Beat
affiliations, his affinity with other Beat writers is
certain. Important influences on Whalen include
william s. burroughs, e.e. cummings, Ginsberg,
Dr. Samuel Johnson, Kerouac, Kyger, charles
olson, Kenneth Patchen, Ezra Pound, Snyder,
Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Welch, and William Carlos Williams, along with Chinese poet
Su Tung-p’o and Zen master Dogen. Such widely
ranging influences demonstrate Whalen’s unique
position as a poet who merges the traditions of
West and East.
Bibliography
Davidson, Michael. The San Francisco Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Suiter, John. Poets on the Peaks. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 2002.
Thurley, Geoffrey. “The Development of the New Language: Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, and Gregory Corso.” In The Beats: Essays in Criticism, edited
by Lee Bartlett, 165–180. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1981.
Jane Falk