Pat Nolan

Review: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know

The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen, edited by Michael Rothenberg; Wesleyan University Press, 2007, 871 pages; $49.95

Everything you ever wanted to know about modern poetry is contained in this book. After a statement like that you might expect Johnny Carson to pipe up and say, "Wrong, iambic pentameter breath!" and go on to cite several specious examples. Be that as it may, The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen contains the quintessence of modern American poetry. Its 851 pages (not including the Index of Titles and First Lines) testify to a life dedicated to scholarship and meditation, revealing, as Joanne Kyger notes, "the pure ease of an ambling and mighty mind." Leslie Scalapino's well-intentioned introduction, marred perhaps by too many parenthetical assertions, is correct in arguing for Whalen's radical and innovative method. However, all students know that the answers are in the back of the book where, in this case, Whalen's unabashedly humorous and self-effacing comments on his process are easily accessible. In essence he is saying, I wanted to be a hack novelist making lots of money from my writing but instead I've inadvertently become someone whose poetry is admired. Go figure. We'll forgive him for his modesty (and for putting on weight).

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Poem and calligraphy by Philip Whalen, copied from The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen, Wesleyan University Press, 2007.