Born in Portland, Oregon, Whalen grew up in The Dalles from age four until he returned to Portland in 1941. He served in the US Army Air Forces during World War II. He attended Reed College on the GI Bill. There, he met Gary Snyder and Lew Welch, and graduated with a BA in 1951. He read at the famous Six Gallery reading in 1955 that marked the launch of the West Coast Beats into the public eye. He appears, in barely fictionalized form, as the character "Warren Coughlin" in Jack Kerouac's "The Dharma Bums", which includes an account of that reading. In "Big Sur" he is called "Ben Fagan". Whalen's poetry was featured in Donald Allen's anthology "The New American Poetry 1945-1960".