Philip Whalen
Encyclopedia
Philip Glenn Whalen was an American poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, Zen
Zen
Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...

 Buddhist, and a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance
San Francisco Renaissance
The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco and which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetic avant-garde. However, others The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range...

 and close to the Beat generation
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...

.

Biography

Born in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

, Whalen grew up in The Dalles
The Dalles, Oregon
The Dalles is the largest city and county seat of Wasco County, Oregon, United States. The name of the city comes from the French word dalle The Dalles is the largest city and county seat of Wasco County, Oregon, United States. The name of the city comes from the French word dalle The Dalles is...

 from age four until he returned to Portland in 1941. He served in the US Army Air Forces during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. He attended Reed College
Reed College
Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...

 on the GI Bill. There, he met Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...

 and Lew Welch
Lew Welch
Lewis Barrett Welch, Jr. was an American poet associated with the Beat generation of poets, artists, and iconoclasts.Welch published and performed widely during the 1960s...

, and graduated with a BA
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 in 1951. He read at the famous Six Gallery reading
Six Gallery reading
The Six Gallery reading was a poetry-reading which occurred at the Six Gallery on Friday, October 7, 1955, at 3119 Fillmore Street in San Francisco....

 in 1955 that marked the launch of the West Coast Beats into the public eye. He appears, in barely fictionalized form, as the character "Warren Coughlin" in Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...

's The Dharma Bums
The Dharma Bums
The Dharma Bums is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. The semi-fictional accounts in the novel are based upon events that occurred years after the events of On the Road...

, which includes an account of that reading. In Big Sur
Big Sur (novel)
Big Sur is a 1962 novel by Jack Kerouac. It recounts the events surrounding Kerouac's three brief sojourns to a cabin in Bixby Canyon, Big Sur, owned by Kerouac's friend and Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti...

he is called "Ben Fagan". Whalen's poetry was featured in Donald Allen
Donald Allen
Donald Merriam Allen , influential editor, publisher, and translator of contemporary American literature. He is perhaps best known for his project The New American Poetry 1945-1960 , among the several important anthologies of contemporary American innovative writing he made available to the public...

's anthology The New American Poetry 1945-1960
The New American Poetry 1945-1960
The New American Poetry 1945–1960 was a poetry anthology edited by Donald Allen, and published in 1960. It aimed to pick out the "third generation" of American modernist poets, and included quite a number of poems fresh from the little magazines of the late 1950s. In the longer term it attained a...

.

Whalen's first interest in Eastern religion
Eastern religion
This article is about far east and Indian religions. For other eastern religions see: Eastern_world#Eastern_cultureEastern religions refers to religions originating in the Eastern world —India, China, Japan and Southeast Asia —and thus having dissimilarities with Western religions...

s centered on Vedanta
Vedanta
Vedānta was originally a word used in Hindu philosophy as a synonym for that part of the Veda texts known also as the Upanishads. The name is a morphophonological form of Veda-anta = "Veda-end" = "the appendix to the Vedic hymns." It is also speculated that "Vedānta" means "the purpose or goal...

. Upon release from the army in 1946, he visited the Vedanta Society in Portland, but did not pursue this very far, because of the expense of attending their countryside ashram. Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...

 also attracted him, but he found it "unnecessarily complicated." In 1952, Gary Snyder lent him books on Zen
Zen
Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...

 by D. T. Suzuki
Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki
Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki was a Japanese author of books and essays on Buddhism, Zen and Shin that were instrumental in spreading interest in both Zen and Shin to the West. Suzuki was also a prolific translator of Chinese, Japanese, and Sanskrit literature...

. Ultimately, Zen became his chosen path.

Whalen spent 1966 and 1967 in Kyoto, Japan, assisted by a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 250-member honor society; its goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Located in Washington Heights, a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan in New York, it shares Audubon Terrace, its Beaux Arts campus on...

 and a job teaching English. There, he practiced zazen
Zazen
In Zen Buddhism, zazen is a meditative discipline practitioners perform to calm the body and the mind, and be able to concentrate enough to experience insight into the nature of existence and thereby gain enlightenment .- Significance :Zazen is considered the heart of Zen Buddhist practice...

 daily, and wrote some forty poems and a second novel.

He moved into the San Francisco Zen Center
San Francisco Zen Center
San Francisco Zen Center , is a network of affiliated Sōtō Zen practice and retreat centers in the San Francisco Bay area, comprising the City Center or Beginner's Mind Temple, the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. The sangha was incorporated by Shunryu...

 and became a student of Zentatsu Richard Baker
Zentatsu Richard Baker
Zentatsu Richard Baker , born Richard Dudley Baker, is an American Soto Zen master , the founder and guiding teacher of Dharma Sangha—which consists of Crestone Mountain Zen Center located in Crestone, Colorado and the Buddhistisches Studienzentrum in Germany's Black Forest...

 in 1972. The following year, he became a monk. He became head monk of Dharma Sangha, in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...

 in 1984. In 1987, he received transmission from Baker, and in 1991, he returned to San Francisco to lead the Hartford Street Zen Center
Hartford Street Zen Center
The Hartford Street Zen Center, temple name Issan-ji , is a Soto Zen practice-center located in the Castro district of San Francisco. Issan Dorsey brought the center from its early beginnings as The Gay Buddhist Club of 1980 to the modern-day Hartford Street Zen Center, becoming Abbot there in 1989...

 until forced by ill health to retire.

Poetry

  • The Calendar, a Book of Poems. Reed College, thesis (B.A.), Portland, Ore. 1951.
  • Self Portrait from Another Direction. Auerhahn Press, San Francisco 1959.
  • Memoirs of an Interglacial Age. Auerhahn Press, San Francisco 1960.
  • Like I Say. Totem Press/Corinth Books, New York 1960
  • Monday in the Evening, 21:VII:61. Pezzoli, Milan 1964
  • Every Day. Coyote's Journal, Eugene, Oregon 1965
  • Highgrade: Doodles, Poems. Coyote's Journal, San Francisco 1966
  • On Bear's Head. Harcourt, Brace & World/Coyote, New York 1969
  • Scenes of Life at the Capital. Maya, San Francisco 1970
  • Enough Said: Fluctuat Nec Mergitur: Poems 1974-1979. Grey Fox Press, San Francisco 1980.
  • Heavy Breathing: Poems 1967-1980. Grey Fox Press, San Francisco 1983
  • Canoeing up Cabarga Creek: Buddhist Poems 1955-1986. Parallax Press, Berkeley 1996.
  • Overtime: Selected Poems by Philip Whalen. Penguin, New York 1999.
  • The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen. Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Connecticut 2007.

Both the Collected and Selected Poems were edited by Michael Rothenberg
Michael Rothenberg
Michael Rothenberg is an American poet, songwriter, editor, and active environmentalist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Born in Miami Beach, Florida, Rothenberg received his Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill...

.

Prose

  • You Didn't Even Try. Coyote, San Francisco 1967. (novel)
  • Imaginary Speeches for a Brazen Head. Black Sparrow Press, Los Angeles 1972. (novel)
  • Off the Wall: Interviews with Philip Whalen. Donald Allen, editor. Grey Fox Press, Bolinas, California 1978.
  • The Diamond Noodle. Poltroon Press, Berkeley 1980. (memoirs)
  • Two Novels. Zephyr Press, Somerville, Mass. 1985.
  • Goof Book (for Jack Kerouac). Big Bridge Press, Guerneville, Calif. 2001. (journal)

External links

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