Death of a poet

Philip Whalen, poet and zen master, died yesterday at 78 years old in San Francisco.

Whalen was one of the poets who read at the legendary 1955 reading at the Six Gallery, the event that more or less started the fame of the whole Beat Generation. He was a friend of Gary Snyder and other famous "Dharma Bums," and like them pursued an interest in zen Buddhism, becoming a zen priest and abbot of SF's Hartford Street Zen Center.

Here are some good Whalen links:

• a brief bio with some links at the Literary Kicks site, and another bio and other links at The Beat Page
• a full bio at Jack Magazine
• An excellent, highly recommended 1999 interview with Whalen, in San Francisco's venerable, indispensible Poetry Flash
• A review of Whalen's collected poems, by Tom Clark, Beat Generation expert and biographer
• Poets on the Peaks, a beautiful book about the firewatch service of Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac and Whalen in the mid-50s

Whalen had been ill for some time, spending his last years at San Francisco's Laguna Honda hospital. A memorial service will be held at the San Francisco Zen Center's Green Gulch Farm in a few weeks -- see their site for details.