Scenes of Life at the Capital

by Philip Whalen, David Brazil (Editor)

Overview

Written from 1969 to 1971, West Coast Beat poet Philip Whalen's "Scenes of Life at the Capital" is a lasting testament to the ambition, range, powers, and devotion of this crucially important American voice. Positioned among the Buddhist temples of Kyoto, Whalen looks across the ocean to address the new frontiers, political problems, and transformative hopes of the United States of the 1960s—so much of which still resonates today. In this new edition—with a deep and enlightening afterword by David Brazil—Whalen's poem is further cemented as a fundamental work in American literary history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781940696928
Publisher:	Wave Books
Publication date:	05/05/2020
Pages:	152
Sales rank:	803,587
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.75(h) x (d)

About the Author

Philip Whalen (1923–2002) was a central figure of the San Francisco Renaissance and Beat movements. One of the readers at the historic Six Gallery reading, he was the author of numerous books of poetry and prose. A longtime practicing Buddhist, he was eventually ordained as a Zen monk and practiced at Zen Centers in New Mexico and San Francisco until his passing in 2002. David Brazil is a poet, pastor and translator. His third book of poetry, Holy Ghost (City Lights, 2017), was nominated for a California Book Award. With Kevin Killian, he co-edited The Kenning Anthology of Poets Theater, 1945-1985. With China Okoye, he was the founding curator of the Berkeley Art Museum's Black Life series, focusing on cultural production in the African diaspora. He has presented his work at Cambridge University, Johns Hopkins, and San Francisco State University, among other venues. He lives in New Orleans.

Read an Excerpt

Scenes of Life at the Capital

For Allen Ginsberg

Having returned at last and being carefully seated

On the floor—somebody else's floor, as usual—

Far away across that ocean which looked

Through Newport windows years ago—somebody else's livingroom—

Another messed-up weedy garden

Tall floppy improbably red flowers

All the leaves turned over in the rain

Ridged furry scrotum veins

Hedges glisten tile roof tin roof telephone pole

Decoratively tormented black pine

Slowly repeating its careful program

Endlessly regretting but here is original done once

Not to be reproduced nor electronically remembered

Loosten up. Festoon.

An enormous drop of pure water suddenly there

Right in the center of preceding page

Nothing can be done about that. The line was ruined. OK.

Belt hair. A bend is funnier. Bar Kochba. Do something

About it. Like animal factory mayhem.

The master said, "You shouldn't have put

Yourself into such a position

In the first place." Nevertheless,

It all looks different, right to left.

Another master said, "Well,

You can always take more, you know."

The wind went by just now

South Dakota. Who's responsible for this

Absurd revival of the Byzantine Empire,

Sioux Falls-Mitchell-Yankton area?

Further anomalies of this order will receive

Such punishment as a Court Martial may direct

Or the discretion of the Company Commander

Failure to conform with these regulations

Shall be punished by Court Martial

TAKE ALL YOU WANT BUT EAT ALL YOU TAKE

The following named Enlisted Men are transf

R E S T R I C T E D. SPECIAL ORDER #21 this

HQ dd 8 Feb 1946 contained 6 Pars. C E N S O R E D

1. Fol EM, White, MCO indicated, ASRS indicated,

AF2AF, are reld fr asgmt and dy this HQ and trfd

in gr to 37th AAFBU, Dorje Field, Lhasa, TIBET

and WP at such time as will enable them to arrive thereat

not later than 20 Feb 1946 rptg to CO for dy C E N S O R E D

Or such punishment as a Court Martial may direct

I used to travel that way.

Always take a little more. This is called

"A controlled habit." (Don't look at me,

I never said a murmuring word.)

Didn't you say, "polished water"?

I normally wouldn't say so.

Wasp in the bookshelf rejects Walt Whitman,

Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, The Goliard Poets,

A Vedic Reader, Lama Govinda, Medieval French Verses & Romances,

Long Discourses of the Buddha, and The Principal Upanishads.

Window glass reads more entertainingly

But soon that too is left for the foxtail grass

Camellia hedge, the dull mid-morning sun

followed by accidental descent into goofball drift

unintentionally

but such is the cost of knowledge

recollections of Jack in Berkeley

Nembies & grass & wine

Geraniums, ripe apricots, & plums

Clio's green and slanting eyes

Gentle smile of pointed face

How much love I owe to her and to all women

My mother tried to warn me,

"Let your sister ride the bike a while;

Don't be so damned selfish!"

How can Victorian American lady

Explain to her son that his cock

Doesn't belong exclusively to himself

But also to certain future women?

It's a matter of some reassurance

That we are physically indistinguishable from other men.

When introspection shows us

That we have different degrees of intelligence

Varying capacities for knowing morality

We lose something of our complacency

Rooty-toot

Rooty-toot

We're the boys

From the Institute

I wondered recently what school was being lampooned

In this impudent snatch of gradeschool melody

Recollection of obscene & early childhood.

If Socrates and Plato and Diotima

And all the rest of the folks at that party

Had simply eaten lots of food and wine and dope

And spent the entire weekend in bed together

Perhaps Western Civilization

Wouldn't have been such a failure?

Rooty-toot, Plato's Original Institute

Much of the morning sweeping consists of clearing away

Bodies of several hundred insects who followed my lightglobes

And perished here.

After 49 days each one of them will be reborn

Each in a different shape in a different world

Each according to the quality of his actions

In all his past existences. What a system.

Hi-de-ho.

Rooty-toot-toot. Normally I wouldn't say no.

Rooty-toot is what any bugle, horn or trumpet

Is thought of as "saying," the sound of a fart.

Years later I found the trumpeting devils in the Inferno

M U S H

All dropped untidy into the bottom of my skull

A warped red plastic phonograph record (the label says

Emperor Concerto) floats on top, inaudible;

Nevertheless, light comes through it in a pleasant way

Precisely the color of raspberry licorice whips.

It got bent in the mail, too near the steampipes . . .

The music is in there someplace, squeezed into plastic

At enormous expense of knowledge,

"FIRE IN THE BORGO"

Table of Contents

Contents

Scenes of Life at the Capital

Afterword: Curious Elision, by David Brazil

Editorial Reviews

Whalen's poetry is not difficult. Great poetry never is. Anybody can understand exactly what is being said, though it may take several readings to appreciate how deeply considered his "meanings" are. The poems are wise, not smart. They aren't grim. He reaches us, mostly, through wit and a cranky insistence upon joy. Most important, he makes poetry of the actual language of the street.
—Lew Welch, San Francisco Chronicle, 1969

Whalen's "gibberish" stems from a koan-like affinity for paradox. It's infectious, like a laugh. His poetry immerses me in the great and mirthful doubt deep in his head—his revelations feel like my own. I feel that Whalen is saying, "Here: You have written eight hundred pages of my collected poems." And what a beautiful gift it is, from the poet, from the comic, from the Buddhist, from the gentle heart.
—Max Ritvo, Parnassus

A poet who simultaneously wants freedom for and from everybody, Whalen's writing has completely resisted the terms of American social and literary engagement that have been set down as unspoken law this century.
—Anselm Berrigan, Jacket Magazine

Many poets today look on themselves as the saviors and martyrs of their time. Whalen, on the contrary, is not concerned with revolutions and social panaceas. If he sees the big man at all he sees him in the small situation: tripping over a pebble on his journey to deliver a rose. Out of themes that are often seemingly mundane and prosaic he creates poetry of significance because his vision is peculiarly his own and because the clarity of his intelligence is capable of grasping and arresting meaning in seemingly ephemeral and unimportant subjects.
—David Kherdian

Whalen's singular style and personality contribute to his character in verse as a bawdy, honest, moody, complicated songster of the frenzied mid-century, an original troubadour and thinker who refused to take himself too seriously during the great revival of visionary lyric in American poetry.
—Paul Christensen, Dictionary of Literary Biography

From the Publisher