Keith Abbott

RHYTHM-A-NING
Philip Whalen's Rhythmic Inventions: Thelonious Monk, Calligraphy and Zen Principles

Hymnus Ad Patrem Sinensis embodies three of Whalen's interests — first, his adaptation and/or assimilation of blues or jazz techniques. Whalen's rhythmic experimentations are evident in his manipulations of accent and tone via shifts in diction, syntax and grammar, his unique morphing of meter for syncopation inside regular measures, and his use of the line lengths, enjambment and spacing to speed or retard time. A Thelonious Monk composition, Rhythm-a-ning, was chosen as a title to highlight Whalen and Monk's shared idiosyncratic skills for rhythmic improvisations.

Second, Whalen adapts and/or assimilates Chinese, Japanese and Buddhist artistic principles, such as brush practice its aesthetics and epistemology. "This poetry is a picture or graph of a mind moving, which is a world body being here and now which is history . . . and you." This artistic credo mirrors Shodo, the way of the brush, where changing relationships of man, heaven and earth are experienced live in painting and calligraphy.

And third, his adaptation and/or assimilation of Zen concepts of compassion occur within Whalen's ruminations on our human passions and our teachers — but with humor. His brush sketch of two Chinese Zenbos with its hilarious sleeping tiger, three wine cups, wine cask and plum blossom float above his idiosyncratic Italic pen calligraphic version of Hymnus and exhibits the confluence of these three interests.

>> See the entire essay in PDF format

Poem and calligraphy by Philip Whalen, copied from Canoeing Up Cabarga Creek: Buddhist Poems, Parallax Press, 1996.