I didn't know much about Whalen's poetry until he died this year, but the terrific memorial reading for him here in San Francisco drove me to "Overtime" and man, what a find. The Beats were more learned than the 'first thought, best thought' aesthetic suggests, and Whalen's poems balance religion, philosophy and cranky Zen insight with a casual, conversational Americanese in a way few of his more famous contemporaries could touch. His poems draw from a deep past that embraces everything from ancient Chinese verse to classical music, but insist that it walk down the street in T-shirt and jeans. Whalen spent the last three decades of his life at the San Francisco Zen Center--his particular brand of Buddhism, so generous to human failings (starting always, comically, with his own) and never, ever doctrinaire, has to be one of the most attractive spins on Eastern religion I've read. Whalen was in it and of it, never above it. He gives the moment plenty of wiggle room in his writing, so that cats, friends and silly thoughts can all stray into the poems without being shoo'd out for art. Whatever Beat meant, Whalen shows it in about its best light. Poetry's a little thinner and more straight-laced with him gone.

This isn't some crumbling, dry keeper of the hallowed institution that is sometimes "poetry." It is sad that Whalen's works are so hard to come by these days.

Why aren't you reading this?

Philip Whalen is a national treasure, one of our most important living poets. This collection, masterfully assembled by Michael Rothenberg, is a great place to start if you're not familiar with Whalen's work, and a glorious visiting ground for those of us who have already discovered him. Don't let the word POETRY dissuade you. You will not be bored for a minute.

Writer-photographer Suiter provides a literary portrait of Beat era poets Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Jack Kerouac in Poets On The Peaks, which centers around their early experiences as fire lookouts in the 1950s. As such, Poets On The Peaks provides a hard book to easily categorize: it covers beautiful Cascade Mountain scenes and peaks, fire lookouts, and literature and biography alike. The writings of these three juxtapose nicely with the photos and images, making this a recommended gift choice for the holiday season.

In his first book, John Suiter has produced a work that contributes significantly to the literature on early development of the Beat literary movement and to understanding the disparate characters of Snyder, Whalen, and Kerouac. Using the common experience of all three men serving as fire lookouts in the Northern Cascades in the early to mid 1950's, the author evokes portraits of how each writer was influenced by wilderness and the isolation of a fire lookout, and how each used the experience in his work. Drawing from recent interviews with Snyder and Whalen and others who knew them during the early 1950's, from previously unpublished letters and journals, and from extensive close readings of all three writers, the author crafts a portrait of the evolution of a literary movement, of a wilderness ethic, and perhaps unintentionally, the devolution of Kerouac contrasted against the focus and dedication of Snyder and Whalen. The book is illustrated with photographs of the fire lookouts and their locales.

"Poets on the Peaks" by John Suiter is a beautiful and insightful book. The text and pictures hold your hand through wonderful reminiscing with and about some of the greatest poets of our time. The landscapes that inspired the poetry that Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and Jack Kerouac are famous for is staged perfectly throughout the book. It gives you a sense of time and place that makes you feel as if you were in those look out towers and you experienced that electric and quiet time. Learn, escape, and love with this book. It is well worth it!

Heavy Breathing is a collection from one of the most original poets from the Beat world. Although affiliated with the beats, Whalen's poetry differs significantly from that of Kerouac, Ginsberg, or Gary Snyder. The poetry is direct and simple, moving and often very funny. Through Whalen's poetry, one can get inside his head, jump around and observe the firing of his synapses.

It is a wonderful collection of previously published poems. Four works constitute this book: Severance Pay, Scenes of Life at the Capital, The Kindness of Strangers, and Enough Said.

First the bad news: I could never get all the way through _Imaginary Speeches_, and what I did read I didn't like all that much. On the other hand, _You Didn't Even Try_ has been, for a long time, one of my favorite novels. It relates the story of a group of California friends, all intellectual or pseudo-intellectual types, and their shifting relationships over a period of about ten years. This is one of the most pleasantly paced novels I have ever read. Whalen has done a rare thing, which is to write a novel that unfolds so casually, so realistically, that you feel you could be reading about your own life. It's strange. I don't like Whalen's poetry, and _Imaginary Speeches_ is, in my opinion, more or less worthless. But _You Didn't Even Try_ is a small, quiet masterpiece.

I am a big fan of Philip Whalen's poetry, so I was very interested in this book, one of his few prose publications.

It is rather interesting, yet the narrative constantly jumps around and nothing really seems to get resolved at the end. One can tell he is a poet making a foray into prose writing.

It is certainly worth checking out, but it in no way compares to Whalen's wonderful poetry.