Philip Whalen

Philip Whalen (1923-2002) was a major voice in American poetry from the 1950s onward. His writing, wisdom and kindness touched close contemporaries such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Olson and Gary Snyder as well as each generation that has followed. Born and raised in rural Oregon, Whalen spent much of his life in the San Francisco Bay area. After returning from a second stay in Kyoto, Japan in 1971, he became a zen monk, taking the Buddhist name Zenshin Ryufu. He served as abbot of the Hartford Street Zen Center in San Francisco. His poetry writing is available in Overtime: Selected Poems (Penguin, 1999) and The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen (Wesleyan, 2007).

resources on the web

Philip Whalen Resources
A comprehensive list of online resources about the author on the Empty Mirror Books website.
http://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/beat/whalen.html

Philip Whalen: An Introduction
A collection of essays about Philip Whalen in Jacket #11 edited by Dale Smith.
http://jacketmagazine.com/11/whalen-intro.html

Philip Whalen recordings on PennSound
Three long recordings: reading at the Vancouver Poetry Festival, University of British Columbia, July 31, 1963; reading "Scenes of Life at the Capitol" in San Francisco, August, 1971; and reading "By and Large", Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1987.
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Whalen.html