Whalen is conscious of a universal oneness, a
wholeness, a shamanic unity and he seeks to
kindle this in a popular audience. His Jungian
mask utilizes humour to translate the
“mediation”. Whalen sums up the beat generation
sentiment when he states again in the “The Slop
barrel”…”That we never grew up, never learned
to behave…But devoted ourselves to magic”.
Here he sums up the magic or shamanic elements
present in the beat generation as a whole. Whalen
demonstrates his commitment to a spiritual world
when in 1972, he was ordained as Unsui or
Buddhist monk. Poetry, Whalen has said, is “the
graph of the mind’s movement” (Hoover, 1994).
Here he is advocating a perceptual oneness of
being, mind and “ars poetica”. This is typical of an
individual of elevated spiritual nature such as
him, a veritable shaman-poet. For Whalen, poetry
is performance-based and automated. Something
both shamanic and instinctive. Philip Whalen is
serenely shamanic.
IV
Anne Waldman, born in Greenwich Village, is
a third generation beat poet influenced by Stein,
Sappho and Poundian epics. In addition, she is
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