Overtime: Selected Poems

by Philip Whalen

Overview

Like his college roommate Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen took both poetry and Zen seriously. He became friends with Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Michael McClure, and played a key role in the explosive poetic revolution of the '50s and '60s. Celebrated for his wisdom and good humor, Whalen transformed the poem for a generation. His writing, taken as a whole, forms a monumental stream of consciousness (or, as Whalen calls it, "continuous nerve movie") of a wild, deeply read, and fiercely independent American--one who refuses to belong, who celebrates and glorifies the small beauties to be found everywhere he looks. This long-awaited Selected Poems is a welcome opportunity to hear his influential voice again.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140589184
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/01/1999
Series:	Penguin Poets
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	944,225
Product dimensions:	6.01(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Philip Whalen spent fifteen years of formal Zen training in Santa Fe and San Francisco. He is currently the Abbot of Hartford Street Zen Center in San Francisco.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

The Road-Runner

FOR L. J. REYNOLDS

Thin long bird
      with a taste for snakes' eyes
Frayed tail, wildcat claws
His pinions are bludgeons.

Few brains, topped
By a crown
And a flair for swift in-fighting—
Try to take it from him.

23:iii:5

Homage to Lucretius

It all depends on how fast you're going
Tending towards light, sound
Or the quiet of mere polarity

Objects: Slowness

Screen
      A walking sieve
Wide-open and nowhere
The mountains themselves
Picked up into turnips, trees
Wander as bones, nails, horns

And we want crystals,
Given a handful of mercury
      (Which can be frozen into a pattern vulnerable to body heat)

The notion intimidates us
We can't easily imagine another world
This one being barely
Visible:
      We lined up and pissed in a snowbank
      A slight thaw would expose
      Three tubes of yellow ice

And so on ...
A world not entirely new
But realized,
The process clarified
Blessyour little pointed head!

1952

"Plus Ça Change ..."

What are you doing?

I am coldly calculating.

I didn't ask for a characterization.
Tell me what we're going to do.

That's what I'm coldly calculating.

You had better say "plotting" or "scheming"
You never could calculate without a machine.

Then I'm brooding. Presently
A plot will hatch.

Who are trying to kid?

Be nice.

(SILENCE)

Listen. Whatever we do from here on out
Let's for God's sake not look at each other
Keep our eyes shut and the lights turned off—
We won't mind touching if we don't have to see.

I'll ignore those preposterous feathers.

Say what you please, we brought it all on ourselves
But nobody's going out of his way to look.

Who'd recognize us now?

We'll just pretend we're used to it.
(Watch out with that goddamned tail!)

Pull the shades down. Turn off the lights.
Shut your eyes.

(SILENCE)

There is no satisfactory explanation.
You can talk until you're blue

Just how much bluer can I get?

Well, save breath you need to cool

Will you please shove the cuttlebone a little closer?

All right, until the perfumes of Arabia

Grow cold. Ah! Sunflower seeds!

Will you listen, please? I'm trying to make
A rational suggestion. Do you mind?

Certainly not. Just what shall we tell the children?

28:ix:53
1:ii:55

If You're So Smart, Why Ain't
You Rich?

I need everything else
Anything else
      Desperately
But I have nothing
Shall have nothing
      but this
Immediate, inescapable
      and invaluable
No one can afford
      THIS
Being made here and now

(Seattle, Washington
         17 May, 1955)

MARIGOLDS

Concise (wooden)
      Orange.
Behind them, the garage door
      Pink
(Paint sold under a fatuous name:
"Old Rose"
      which brings a war to mind)

And the mind slides over the fence again
Orange against pink and green
Uncontrollable!

Returned of its own accord
It can explain nothing
Give no account

What good? What worth?
      Dying!

You have less than a second
      To live
To try to explain:
Say that light
      in particular wave-lengths
      or bundles wobbling at a given speed
Produces the experience
Orange against pink

Better than a sirloin steak?
A screen by Korin?

The effect of this, taken internally
The effect
      of beauty
               on the mind

There is no equivalent, least of all
These objects
Which ought to manifest
A surface disorientation, pitting
Or striae
Admitting some plausible interpretation

But the cost
Can't be expressed in numbers
Dodging between
      a vagrancy rap
      and the newest electrical brain-curette
Eating what the rich are bullied into giving
Or the poor willingly share
Depriving themselves

More expensive than ambergris
      Although the stink
           isn't as loud. (A few

Wise men have said,
      "Produced the same way ...
      Vomited out by sick whales.")
Valuable for the same qualities
      Staying-power and penetration
I've squandered every crying dime.

Seattle 17-18:v:55

Table of Contents

OvertimeIntroduction

/The Road-Runner
Homage to Lucretius
"Plus Ça Change . . ."
If You're So Smart, Why Ain't You Rich?
The Slop Barrel: Slices of the Paideuma for All Sentient Beings
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Further Notice
Soufflé
Literary Life in the Golden West
10:x:57, 45 Years Since the Fall of the Ch'ing Dynasty
For My Father
Metaphysical Insomnia Jazz. Mumonkan xxix.
O:vii:58, On Which I Renounce the Notion of Social Responsibility
Hymnus Ad Patrem Sinensis
Complaint: To the Muse
Prose Take-Out, Portland, 13:ix:58
Self-Portrait Sad, 22:ix:58
Something Nice About Myself
Take, 25:iii:59
A Distraction Fit
Haiku for Mike
Address to the Boobus, with her Hieratic Formulas in Reply
Boobus Hierophante, Her Incantations
To the Moon
Song for 2 Balalaikas on the Corner of 3rd & Market
Since You Ask Me
To a Poet
An Irregular Ode
Haiku, for Gary Snyder
A Vision of the Bodhisattvas
Dream
Historical Disquisitions
Dream & Excursus, Arlington Massachusetts
For Albert Saijo
Homage to Rodin
The Daydream
That One
Vector Analysis
One of My Favorite Songs Is Stormy Weather
Friendship Greetings
Early Autumn in Upper Noe Valley
The Chariot
Song to Begin Rohatsu
Spring Musick
For Brother Antoninus
Life and Death and a Letter to My Mother Beyond Them Both
Plums, Metaphysics, an Investigation, a Visit, and a Short Funeral Ode
Three Mornings
Raging Desire &c.
The Fourth of October, 1963
Inside Stuff
Native Speech
Compostition
The Lotus Sutra, Naturalized
Early Spring
The Metaphysical Town Hall and Bookshop
The Ode to Music
Goddess
True Confessions
The Preface
Bleakness, Farewell
Homage to William Seward Burroughs
Dear Mr President
Japanese Tea Garden Golden Gate Park in Spring
"A Penny for the Old Guy"
Mahayana
Love Love Love Again
April Showers Bring Rain?
A Morning Walk
"The Sun Rises and Sets in That Child," so my grandmother used to say,
"California Is Odious but Indispensible"
Imagination of the Taj Mahal
T/O
That Eyes! Those Nose!
M
The Life of Literature
America!
Giant Sequoias
L'Enfant Prodigue
Good News and Gospel
Palimpsest
Labor Day
Sad Song
Lemon Trees
EAMD
Walking
3 Days Ago
5th Position
Ginkakuji Michi
Sanjusangendo
Crowded
White River Ode
A Revolution
The War Poem for Diane di Prima
The Garden
Confession and Penance
The Grand Design
Success Is Failure
The Winter
The Winter for Burton Watson
"NEFAS"
All of it went on the wrong page
The Dharma Youth League
Failing
A Romantic & Beautiful Poem Inspired by the Recollection of William Butler Yeats, His Life & Work
International Date Line, Monday / Monday 27:XI:67
America Inside & Outside Bill Brown's House in Bolinas
Life in the City. In Memoriam Edward Gibbon
Allegorical Painting: Capitalistic Society Destroyed by the Contradictions Within Itself. (Second Five-Year Plan.)
To the Revolutionary Cadres of Balboa, Malibu & Santa Barbara
Duerden's Garage, Stinson Beach
Walking Beside the Kamogawa, Remembering Nansen and Fudo and Gary's Poem
Behind the Door
Life at Bolinas. The Last of California
Birthday Poem
Excerpts from"Scenes of Life at the Capital"
Many Colored Squares
"Up in Michigan"
"Old Age Echoes"
The Letter to Thomas Clark 22:VII:71 from Bolinas where He Sat beside Me to Help to Write It
"Horrible Incredible Lies": Keith Lampe Spontaneously
Imaginary Splendors
Public Opinions
Monument Rescue Dim
The Turn
Look Look Look
"I Told Myself": Bobbie Spontaneously
Growing and Changing
October First
Occasional Dilemmas
Ode for You
Alleyway
In the Night
"Stolen and Abandoned"
Tassajara
The Universal & Susquehanna Mercy Co. Dayton, O.
Message
High-tension on Low-pressure Non-accomplishment Blues
Mask
Detachment, Wisdom and Compassion
Money Is the Roost of All Eagles
"The Conditions That Prevail"
The Talking Picture
Dream Poems
Murals Not Yet Dreamed
The Vision of Delight
Luxury in August
How to Be Successful & Happy Without Anybody Else Finding Out About It
Compulsive Obligatory Paranoia Flashes
For Clark Coolidge
The Radio Again
Somebody Else's Problem Bothers Me
Bead
Defective Circles
Obsolete Models
Many Pages Must Be Thrown Away
The Congress of Vienna
To the Memory Of
"Past Ruin'd Ilion"
Tears and Recriminations
Discriminations
Homage to St. Patrick, Garc&ía Lorca, & the Itinerant Grocer
What About It?
Treading More Water
Treading Water
What? Writing in the Dining Room?
What's New?
Violins in Chaos?
The Bay Trees Were About to Bloom
Dying Tooth Song
Rich Interior, After Thomas Mann
Chanson d'Outre Tombe
Hot Springs Infernal in the Human Beast
Homage to Hart Crane
What Are You Studying, These Days?
Dharmakaya
Some of These Days
Epigrams & Imitations
For Allen, on His 60th Birthday

Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

"In Philip Whalen's poetry, offhand compositional elegance and the deep amusement of wisdom combine to produce one of the pure delights of contemporary literature."
--Ron Padgett

"Philip Whalen is a great poet; I get as much wisdom and affection from his work as from that of any poet whosoever, dead or alive, having lived whenever. The range, the space, the humor are all considerable, kingdoms of cloud mind unscrolling into the most concrete of details. This is a very large spirit."
--Alice Notley

From the Publisher