Canoeing Up Cabarga Creek: Buddhist Poems (1996 first edition)

This first edition of Canoeing Up Cabarga Creek was published in 1996.

Witty, unabashed, lively, and wonderfully readable, Canoeing Up Cabaga Creek is a retrospective collection of Buddhist poetry written over a 30-year period by the acclaimed Philip Whalen. Written in a deceptively simple and richly perceptive style, the poems will amuse and delight the reader.

About the Author

Philip Whalen is often labelled a “Beat poet” because he enjoyed his first creative achievement during the years when Beat literature thrived. As an ally and confidant of the major figures of the Beat Generation—and as a significant poet in his own right—Whalen is generally considered one of the pioneering forces behind the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance of the mid-1950s. The author’s work differs from much Beat writing in its reverential treatment of the mundane, its self-deprecating humor, and its generally apolitical tone. Dictionary of Literary Biography essayist Paul Christensen writes: “Whalen’s singular style and personality contribute to his character in verse as a bawdy, honest, moody, complicated songster of the frenzied mid-century, an original troubadour and thinker who refused to take himself too seriously during the great revival of visionary lyric in American poetry.”