Leslie Scalapino's introduction to the Philip Whalen collected....

via Bookslut

EPC/Philip Whalen Author Home Page

from "Sourdough Mountain Lookout"--

Ptarmigan hunt for bugs in the snow
Bear peers through the wad at noon
Deer crowd up to see the lamp
A mouse nearly drowns in the honey
I see my bootprints mingle with deer-foot
Bear-paw mule-shoe in the dusty path to the privy

Much later I write down:
"raging, Viking sunrise
The gorgeous death of summer in the east"
(Influence of a Byronic landscape-
Bent pages exhibiting depravity of style.)

Outside the lookout I lay nude on the granite
Mountain hot September sun but inside my head
Calm dark night with all the other stars
HERACLITUS: "The Waking have one common world
But the sleeping turn aside
Each into a world of his own."

I keep telling myself what I really like
Are music, books, certain land and sea-scapes
The way light falls across them, diffusion of
Light through agate, light itself...I suppose
I'm still afraid of the dark...