Bowed Some, Chanted a Little: Philip Whalen's Zen Journals and the San Francisco Renaissance
The literary journals of a key figure in both the Beat and San Francisco Renaissance movements of the New American Poetry, and an ordained Zen Buddhist priest
 
Philip Whalen (1923-2002) authored twenty collections of verse, more than twenty broadsides, two novels, a huge assemblage of autobiographical literary journals, nine or ten experimental prose works, and dozens of critical essays, lectures, commentaries, introductions, prefaces, and interviews. But he came to regard his literary journals as his most important prose legacy.

Whalen’s literary work represents a significant turn in American letters, as he and his closest colleagues immersed themselves in East Asian literature and religion, reinvigorating strikingly new linguistic and aesthetic paths for North American writers and artists. However, until now Whalen’s forty-plus years of journals—sixty small eight-by-six-inch notebooks—have been largely inaccessible, archived in the rare book and manuscript library at the University of California, Berkeley, undigitized and unavailable online. Thus, the publication of a critical scholarly edition of Whalen’s journals and notebooks constitutes an important literary event and an invaluable resource for scholars, teachers, poets, and lay readers who follow twentieth-century North American poetry.
 
1138653281
Bowed Some, Chanted a Little: Philip Whalen's Zen Journals and the San Francisco Renaissance
The literary journals of a key figure in both the Beat and San Francisco Renaissance movements of the New American Poetry, and an ordained Zen Buddhist priest
 
Philip Whalen (1923-2002) authored twenty collections of verse, more than twenty broadsides, two novels, a huge assemblage of autobiographical literary journals, nine or ten experimental prose works, and dozens of critical essays, lectures, commentaries, introductions, prefaces, and interviews. But he came to regard his literary journals as his most important prose legacy.

Whalen’s literary work represents a significant turn in American letters, as he and his closest colleagues immersed themselves in East Asian literature and religion, reinvigorating strikingly new linguistic and aesthetic paths for North American writers and artists. However, until now Whalen’s forty-plus years of journals—sixty small eight-by-six-inch notebooks—have been largely inaccessible, archived in the rare book and manuscript library at the University of California, Berkeley, undigitized and unavailable online. Thus, the publication of a critical scholarly edition of Whalen’s journals and notebooks constitutes an important literary event and an invaluable resource for scholars, teachers, poets, and lay readers who follow twentieth-century North American poetry.
 
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Bowed Some, Chanted a Little: Philip Whalen's Zen Journals and the San Francisco Renaissance

Bowed Some, Chanted a Little: Philip Whalen's Zen Journals and the San Francisco Renaissance

Bowed Some, Chanted a Little: Philip Whalen's Zen Journals and the San Francisco Renaissance

Bowed Some, Chanted a Little: Philip Whalen's Zen Journals and the San Francisco Renaissance

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Overview

The literary journals of a key figure in both the Beat and San Francisco Renaissance movements of the New American Poetry, and an ordained Zen Buddhist priest
 
Philip Whalen (1923-2002) authored twenty collections of verse, more than twenty broadsides, two novels, a huge assemblage of autobiographical literary journals, nine or ten experimental prose works, and dozens of critical essays, lectures, commentaries, introductions, prefaces, and interviews. But he came to regard his literary journals as his most important prose legacy.

Whalen’s literary work represents a significant turn in American letters, as he and his closest colleagues immersed themselves in East Asian literature and religion, reinvigorating strikingly new linguistic and aesthetic paths for North American writers and artists. However, until now Whalen’s forty-plus years of journals—sixty small eight-by-six-inch notebooks—have been largely inaccessible, archived in the rare book and manuscript library at the University of California, Berkeley, undigitized and unavailable online. Thus, the publication of a critical scholarly edition of Whalen’s journals and notebooks constitutes an important literary event and an invaluable resource for scholars, teachers, poets, and lay readers who follow twentieth-century North American poetry.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780817360139
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Publication date: 09/22/2023
Series: Modern and Contemporary Poetics
Edition description: First Edition, First Edition
Pages: 364
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Brian A. Unger is editor of Zen Monster, a literary and arts magazine.
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