Sourdough Mountain Lookout (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Philip Whalen
- First Published: 1960
- Type of Work: Meditation
- Genres: Poetry, Meditation
- Subjects: West, U.S., Forests or forestry, Pacific Northwest, Fire, Buddha, Mountains
The Poem
“Sourdough Mountain Lookout” reflects on Philip Whalen’s experience as a fire lookout in the Cascade Mountains in the western United States. The poem does not develop ideas or narrative in a linear fashion; instead, it wanders and loops in a manner that suggests the natural course of the thoughts of someone ruminating on experience. In his notes on poetics in The New American Poetry 1945-1960 (1960), Whalen describes his poetry as “a picture or a graph of a mind moving, which is a world body being here and now which is history…and you.” The title...
[The entire page is 1498 words long]
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