something nice about Philip Whalen
After a long wait, I finally got my hands on a copy of The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen today, and have been skimming through it during lulls in my PennSound work this afternoon (namely, segmenting a wonderful reading by Kyle Schlesinger, Frances Richard and Jesse Seldess sent to us by Tim Peterson). While I’d first read Whalen at least half a lifetime ago in The Portable Beat Reader, I’d had a hard time coming across his work, other than a beat-up copy of Heavy Breathing I’d found when I was 21. Thankfully, Al Filreis was kind enough to lend me his copy of the Collected this past spring, when I segmented his 1963 reading at the Vancouver Poetry Festival, which made the task much easier and also piqued my interest in Whalen once more.
A pleasant side-effect of my job is that the intense, repetitive attention required when editing audio of a poetry reading also gives you an opportunity to get to know the work rather intimately. Another poet for whom I had a similar experience is Paul Blackburn, whose work I’ve also been enjoying immensely as of late, having found cheap copies of The Cities and In. On. Or About the Premises at a local book store. If I remember correctly, one of the “other essays” in Lew Welch’s “How I Work as a Poet” and Other Essays) is a review of one of Whalen’s books (perhaps On Bear’s Head?) in which he lauds the poetry but complains about how expensive the book is, and this sentiment is on-target here as well, as the collection is marvelous, yet prohibitively priced. I’ve assigned the book as an optional text for my Beat Generation course this semester — Whalen is one of five authors the students can write their final paper on — but I wonder if anyone will choose it, which seems a shame, since there’s a lot in his poetry that could appeal to undergrads.
More about that pedagogical/ethical conundrum at a later date, however. For now, here are two brief delights from Whalen, written half a century ago:
Something Nice About Myself
Lots of people who no longer love each other
Keep on loving me
& I
I make myself rarely available.
Take, 25:III:59
I’ve run so far in one circle I’m visible now
only from the chest upwards
Any poet who’s really any good
Dances a complicated maze on top of the ground
scarcely wearing out the grass
