Overtime: Selected Poems (Penguin Poets) - Softcover

Whalen, Philip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014058918X ISBN 13: 9780140589184

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 1999

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Philip Whalen spent fifteen years of formal Zen training in Santa Fe and San Francisco. He is currently the Abbot of Hartford Street Zen Center in San Francisco.

Reviews

Palpably realistic, Boswellian in detail, by turns cranky, amused, hungry or sated with experience, Whalen's verse remains uniquely personal, an artifact of one man's creative energy. A Buddhist abbot known for early, California friendships with Gary Snyder, Lew Welch and Allen Ginsberg (see Dharma Bums for Kerouac's impressions of those relationships), Whalen has remained in San Francisco for most of his career, a fact wonderfully reflected in his daybook-like verse: "I always say I won't go back to the mountains/ I am too old and fat there are bugs mean mules/ And pancakes every morning of the world." Gertrude Stein, Samuel Johnson, William Carlos Williams, Lady Murasaki and Japanese Zen practices are all perceptible influences, and even an evangelical urgency enters Whalen's verse at times, with a backwoods conviction in the virtues of conversion. But true to his credo, "I shall be myself," Whalen, critical and ironic, soars "free, a genius, an embarrassment/ like the Indian, the buffalo/ like Yellowstone National Park." As many of Whalen's books have dropped out of print, this generous volume, introduced by poet and critic Scalapino, and chronologically organized and selected by poet Rothenberg, is long overdue. It helps reacquaint us with a key figure who continues to work toward social and personal transformation.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Hymnus Ad Patrem Sinensis

I praise those ancient Chinamen
Who left me a few words,
Usually a pointless joke or a silly question
A line of poetry drunkenly scrawled on the margin of a quick
splashed picture--bug, leaf,
caricature of Teacher
on paper held together now by little more than ink
& their own strength brushed momentarily over it
Their world & several others since
Gone to hell in a handbasket, they knew it--
Cheered as it whizzed by--
& conked out among the busted spring rain cherryblossom winejars
Happy to have saved us all

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 014058918X
• ISBN 13: 9780140589184
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 311