Sunday 9 September 2012

Philip Whalen: Discriminations


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File:Cyclamen persicum group.JPG

A bank of wild Cyclamen persicum, Lavi Park, north Israel: photo by Shlomo Jeret, 9 March 2007


Early morning hot moonlight
A catastrophe, the garden too theatrical
Feels wild, unearthly
H. P. Lovecraft could use his favorite adjective:
"Eldritch"

The "shooting-star" flowers that Mama used to call "bird-bills"
Bloom around the Hogback graveyard
Suzuki Roshi's great seamless monument
Wild cyclamen, actually, as in the Palatine Anthology
I go home and mend my rakusu with golden thread.



Tassajara, 24.ii.78


Philip Whalen (1923-2002): Discriminations, 24 February 1978, from Heavy Breathing, Poems 1967-1980 (1980)



File:Rakefet002.jpg

Cyclamen persicum: photo by MathKnight, 7 February 2009


File:GivatHaRakafot001.jpg

Cyclamen persicum flowers, Givat HaRakafot, Israel
: photo by MathKnight and Zachi Evenor, February 2010


File:Cyclamen persicum - Çevlik, Hatay province, Turkey.jpg

Cyclamen persicum,
Çevlik, Hatay Province, Turkey: photo by Maarten Sepp, 1 April 2009


File:Cyclamen 'Stirling'.jpg

Cyclamen persicum, cultivar 'Stirling', Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, Tasmania
: photo by JJ Harrison, 24 June 2009


File:Japanese buddhist monk by Arashiyama cut.jpg

A Sōtō monk wearing his light-brown rakusu over his robes. Yuzen is a Buddhist monk from the Sōtō Zen sect. Here he is seen begging at Oigama, Arashiyama, Kyoto. Begging is part of the training of some Buddhist sects: photo by Marubatsu, 21 May 2006



The Hogback, above Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, Ventana Wilderness area of Los Padres National Forest: photo by David Silva, April 2010



Mountain landscape near Tassajara: photo by David Silva, April 2010



Mountain landscape near Tassajara: photo by David Silva, April 2010

11 comments:

  1. Tom,

    Beautiful beautiful beautiful -- "Discriminations," "shooting stars," Mountain landscape

    9.9

    light coming into sky above still black
    ridge, planet next to black pine branch
    in foreground, wave sounding in channel

    and which will soon be here,
    and so to it is in it

    when used to say, “you must
    know, you must forget”

    silver line of sun reflected in channel,
    waning white moon in cloudless blue sky

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  2. wonderful...!! love the mountains!

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  3. Tom:
    Thanks for including my photos of the Ventana wilderness surrounding Tassajara. Thought your readers might be interested: these are images taken the first Spring after the Basin Complex Fire severely burned all of the Ventana sourounding Tassajara. For an amazing account of the fire read Fire Monks by Colleen Busch. And, if you're interested, here's a link to photos I used in a self-published book I made about the fire, titled Regarding Fire and Birth: Photgraphy, Ecology and Zen.
    http://flic.kr/s/aHsjp7aRLT

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  4. Flowers indiscriminate
    all over the place it would seem
    poet thread
    the eye
    of your needle
    like a monk would.

    Last night went to see
    what all the commotion was about

    white stars on the ground white
    in the moonlight
    between ferns

    Were they moon moths
    or butterflies
    white bats hanging
    lovely as memories
    too numerous to count.

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  5. It is dry there
    after the devastation
    plus summer

    but we see where
    the Mummy has been

    leaving a trail
    to the future

    to the secrets
    of the ancients

    hidden under some rocks.
    I go begging
    for these secrets

    under the tutelage
    of a master
    in detection.
    Hint: he is not the Mummy
    although...

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  6. I've read about the particular
    sadness of the lemon cake*
    but the discriminations
    of September 7th cake
    really
    takes the cake
    at the foot
    of
    the mountain
    once beautiful
    with its unfortunate name.

    Search & Rescue has begun
    for the perfect
    greeting card
    to
    say it better
    or a tattoo
    of a daisy on my shoulder
    where she pulled
    and always escaped
    her leash
    despite all the worry
    all the focus.

    *novel by Aimee Bender

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  7. Whether in the moonlight at the foot of the mountain or among the shooting stars scattered below us on the ground or up and out there beyond the peak, it is of our gratitude to kind friends we would wish to speak; from here in the quiet night...

    David, that's beautiful set of photos. And it's particularly helpful to have your comment. In putting this together I pondered the question of adding to your captions a bit of information about the fire, which of course occurred long after Phil composed this poem. But now you've done that for me; many thanks for that, and for attending with such great care and loving eye to this magnificent piece of the planet.

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  8. First Frank O’Hara and now Philip Whalen and the great legacy of 20th Century AmPo they represent – guaranteed to get my attention every time. We should all have a rakusu to mend with golden thread. PW unpacking boxes of books shortly after he had taken up residence at the Zen Center commenting that the recently published Collected FOH was a “doorstop” as if such a collection was somehow unseemly, but said, I think, with just a trace of envy.

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  9. Pat,

    Well Phil was always so grumpy and crotchety about everything, bless his heart, and that book IS a doorstop... but a very solid foundation also, and too it was made possible not by committees or boards of academic wardheelers but by the grand expert thoroughgoing professional editorial work of Phil's gracious sometime host Don Allen. The care and competence beyond anything the past masters might get now.

    Don of course did the editorial honours (among other services) for both these poets. Those lovely later books of Phil's were all his doing.

    Back "in the day" there seemed no inconsistency in thinking about Phil's poems and Frank's poems in the same thought. Different speed and pacing, but with both, the sense of humour and vernacular grasp, American sophisticated intelligent high style.

    After Frank's passing I placed Phil's The Garden up against Tony Towle's Sunrise Ode to Frank O'Hara in PR #41, 1967. That seemed a natural and respectful fit.

    Don, as Frank's executor, having seen Phil's Four Poems in #46, then gave me ten great Frank poems ne'er before seen. Frank's set came out in the magazine in #47, 1968. I look back upon all this work and this landscape now as classic, these two poets as twin peaks.

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  10. Thanks for all this bit of history Tom -- Frank and Phil and Don and all, all "past masters" indeed

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  11. Such a magical golden oldie from Whalen. As if "you didn't even try." And, tho I might have read it long before, tho I doubt it, uncanny, if not eldritch, to read your posting of it (then following the rakusu thread on wikipedia) just after writing some lines inspired by Mary Butts' The Crystal Cabinet:

    Today I rescued a dictionary
    and vice-versa: not the OED
    but the best I've got, Mom's 1963
    graduation gift, The World Book's two big volumes
    heavy enough for book ends,
    to rescue me from the laziness and ignorance
    shown in not looking up words
    found in books, unknown,
    only a few I stumble on via the internet.

    Mary Butts' The Crystal Cabinet intervened
    with such delights as begged to be defined
    by turns of the printed pages at my side.
    Next stop: the internet,
    where 'coty-house' and 'scaifed' may not hide.

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