Available From UC Press

Crowded by Beauty

The Life and Zen of Poet Philip Whalen

David Schneider

Philip Whalen was an American poet, Zen Buddhist, and key figure in the literary and artistic scene that unfolded in San Francisco in the 1950s and ’60s. When the Beat writers came West, Whalen became a revered, much-loved member of the group. Erudite, shy, and profoundly spiritual, his presence not only moved his immediate circle of Beat cohorts, but his powerful, startling, innovative work would come to impact American poetry to the present day.

Drawing on Whalen’s journals and personal correspondence—particularly with Ginsberg, Kerouac, Snyder, Kyger, Welch, and McClure —David Schneider shows how deeply bonded these intimates were, supporting one another in their art and their spiritual paths. Schneider, himself an ordained priest, provides an insider’s view of Whalen’s struggles and breakthroughs in his thirty years as a Zen monk. When Whalen died in 2002 as the retired Abbot of the Hartford Street Zen Center, his own teacher referred to him as a patriarch of the Western lineage of Buddhism. Crowded by Beauty chronicles the course of Whalen’s life, focusing on his unique, eccentric, humorous, and literary-religious practice.

David Schneider is the author of Street Zen: The Life and Work of Issan Dorsey. He was ordained as a Zen priest in 1977 and was made an acharya of the Shambhala lineage in 1995.

“More than a biography or a memoir ... a CELEBRATION of Zen Being.”—Michael McClure, author of Of Indigo and Saffron: New and Selected Poems

"Philip Whalen’s poetry is complex, generous, and utterly amusing, as he was. David Schneider’s biography uses Phil’s own circular sense of time to fascinate us with this life of a poet and Buddhist; part beatnik, part 19th-century throwback, part profound animal—-part roshi, still calling us to order and to rejoice."—Alice Notley, author of Negativity’s Kiss

"Fellowship and remarkable clarity bring enlightened and generous understanding to this rendering of the life and times of singular poet and teacher Philip Whalen. His longtime friend in the Dharma, teacher and writer David Schneider transmits the delight and wisdom of this poet's bountiful spirit."—Joanne Kyger, author of Again: Poems 1989–2000

"Crowded by Beauty is an exceedingly vivid and nuanced portrait of the inimitable Philip Whalen, a secret hero to many of us coming after. Schneider captures Whalen’s life, work, and the Dharma ‘path,’ carving out a time capsule of, as yet, unexplored countercultural practice and ethos.”—Anne Waldman, The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa University

“‘Our real life is in other persons,’ Philip Whalen once said. His larger than life-sized poems, Zen teachings, journals, and letters all live on in this moving and big-hearted biography-by-friendships—made up equally of scholarship, personal knowledge, gossipy quotes, foodstuffs, desires, realized interconnection, and quicksilver perception.”—Jane Hirshfield, author of Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World

“‘Lively’ was one of Philip Whalen’s favorite words, and that’s what David Schneider’s biography of Whalen is....Highly original, personable, and authoritative, Crowded by Beauty will take its place among the very best books on both the Beat Generation and American Zen.”—John Suiter, author of Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the North Cascades

352 pp.6 x 9Illus: 20 black and white

9780520247468$29.95|£25.00Hardcover

Jul 2015