Philip Whalen played a key role in the explosive poetic revolution of the fifties and sixties, and, like his college roommate Gary Snyder, took both poetry and Zen seriously. An original troubadour and thinker - confidant and ally to Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Michael McClure - he is celebrated for his wisdom, honesty, daring, and good humor. Taken as a whole, Whalen's writing forms a monumental stream of consciousness (or, as he calls it, "continuous nerve movie") of a wild, deeply read, and fiercely independent American - one who refuses to belong, who glorifies the small beauties found everywhere he looks. Whalen transformed the poem for a generation.