Whalen has never produced the magnum opus he seems intellectually qualified to have written. Instead, there are the shorter ironic pieces ("For C," "Fond Farewell to the Chicago Quarterly") which are often perfect, and the longer, fragmented works which only occasionally achieve the moments of penetrating insight…. It seems to have been Whalen's destiny, his function perhaps, to accept a kind of failure. We may speculate … on the influence of the feminization of the mind encouraged by Buddhism. It is unlikely that a forthright Christian ethic of duty, obligation and striving would have been able to give us the things Whalen has given. If we compare him with Roethke, for instance, whom he resembles in many ways (they write the tragicomedy of obesity), Roethke's labor and strain seem inadequate recompense for the loss of the humor and the play of mind Whalen's detachment affords him…. Curiously, many of...