The Gary Snyder reader : prose, poetry, and translations, 1952-1998.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Snyder, Gary, 1930-

Standardized Title:

Selections. 1999

Language:

Chinese

English

Subjects (All):

Snyder, Gary, 1930-.

Snyder, Gary.

Poets, American--20th century--Correspondence.

Poets, American.

Environmentalists--United States--Biography.

Environmentalists.

United States.

Chinese poetry--Translations into English.

Chinese poetry.

Poets, American--20th century--Interviews.

Poets, American--20th century--Diaries.

Beats (Persons)--Poetry.

Beats (Persons).

Zen poetry, American.

Genre:

Correspondence.

Biographies.

Interviews.

Diaries.

Poetry.

Personal correspondence.

Physical Description:

xxii, 617 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : Counterpoint, [1999]

Summary:

This monumental collection gathers the essays, travel journals, letters, poems, and translations of one of the most influential voices of the twentieth century.

Gary Snyder has been a major cultural force in America for five decades--prize-winning poet, environmental activist, Zen Buddhist, earth-householder, and reluctant counterculture guru. Having expanded far beyond the Beat scene that first brought his work to the public ear and eye, Snyder has produced a broad-ranging body of work that encompasses his fluency in Eastern literature and culture, his commitment to the environment, and his concepts of humanity's place in the cosmos.

Prose selections include journals from his travels to Saigon, Singapore, Kyoto, Ceylon, New Delhi, and Dharamshala; key interviews from the East West Journal and The Paris Review; meditations on Buddhism and the surrender of self; a cultural survey of communal living; and notes from the lookout tower on Sourdough Mountain, where in stark isolation Snyder once watched for forest fires.

The Reader gathers poems from each phase of Snyder's long career--from his first collection, Riprap, to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Turtle Island, through his epic poem cycle that was forty years in the making, Mountains and Rivers Without End.

This book also includes what Snyder calls "fugitive and unpublished material"-- new translations of Japanese and Chinese poems, correspondence with Philip Whalen and Will Petersen, and some recent poems, as well as an introduction by novelist Jim Dodge.

From freighter to firetower, Zendo to Himalayan mountain ridge, Snyder's writings reflect a lifetime of study, journey, and the practice of everyday mindfulness. Gary Snyder has witnessed and captured our culture at the hinge of change and--time and again--his work has transformed us just as it has altered our understanding of literature and place in a purposeful life.

Contents:

Author's Note xxi

Prose

from Earth House Hold

Lookout's Journal 5

Japan First Time Around 24

Spring Sesshin at Shokoku-ji 34

Buddhism and the Possibilities of a Planetary Culture 41

Passage to More Than India 44

Poetry and the Primitive 52

Suwa-no-se Island and the Banyan Ashram 62

from He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village

The Myth 71

Function of the Myth 75

from The Real Work

The East West Interview 91

from Passage Through India

The Cambodge 129

Pondicherry 135

Khajuraho 139

Dharamshala 141

Dalai Lama 144

Letters

to Philip Whalen (1954-1961) 149

to Will Petersen (1957-1958) 160

from The Practice of the Wild

The Etiquette of Freedom 167

The Place, the Region, and the Commons 183

Blue Mountains Constantly Walking 200

Ancient Forests of the Far West 214

Grace 235

from A Place in Space

Smokey the Bear Sutra 241

Four Changes, with a Postscript 245

"Energy Is Eternal Delight" 254

Unnatural Writing 257

The Porous World 263

Coming into the Watershed 267

Kitkitdizze: A Node in the Net 277

from The Great Clod Project

"Wild" in China 287

Walls Within Walls 296

The Brush 313

The Paris Review Interview 319

Selections from Journals

Japan, "Of All the Wild Sakura" 341

Australia 349

Ladakh 353

Botswana and Zimbabwe 360

Uncollected Essays

Walking the Great Ridge Omine on the Womb-Diamond Trail 371

Walking Downtown Naha 383

Is Nature Real? 387

Entering the Fiftieth Millenium 390

from Riprap

Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout 399

Piure Creek 400

Milton by Firelight 401

Above Pate Valley 402

Hay for the Horses 403

Riprap 404

from Myths and Texts

from "Logging"

"The Morning Star Is Not a Star" 407

"But Ye Shall Destroy Their Altars" 407

"Lodgepole Pine: The Wonderful Reproductive" 408

"Each Dawn Is Clear" 409

"The Groves Are Down" 410

"Lodgepole" 410

from "Hunting"

First Shaman Song 411

This Poem Is for Bear 412

This Poem Is for Deer 413

"Sealion, Salmon, Offshore

" 415

"Flung from Demonic Wombs" 416

"How Rare to Be Born a Human Being!" 416

from "Burning"

Maudgalyayana Saw Hell 417

John Muir on Mt. Ritter 418

Amitabha's Vow 419

"Spikes of New Smell Driven up Nostrils" 419

"Stone-flake and Salmon" 421

"'Wash Me on Home, Mama'" 422

from The Back Country

A Berry Feast 425

The Spring 429

A Walk 430

Burning the Small Dead 431

Foxtail Pine 432

Oil 433

After Work 434

Four Poems for Robin 435

Work to Do Toward Town 437

The Manichaens 438

Artemis 439

Mother of the Buddhas 440

Nature Green Shit 441

Twelve Hours Out of New York 442

Hop, Skip, and Jump 443

Through the Smoke Hole 444

Nanao Knows 446

from Regarding Wave

Wave 449

In the House of the Rising Sun 450

Song of the Taste 451

Kyoto Born in Spring Song 452

Everybody Lying on Their Stomachs, Head Toward the Candle, Reading, Sleeping, Drawing 453

Shark Meat 454

The Bed in the Sky 455

Regarding Wave 456

Revolution in the Revolution in the Revolution 457

Sours of the Hills 458

To Fire 459

Love 460

Meeting the Mountains 461

Long Hair 462

from Turtle Island

Without 465

I Went Into the Maverick Bar 466

No Matter, Never Mind 467

The Bath 468

Control Burn 471

Prayer for the Great Family 472

Source 473

For Nothing 474

The Egg 475

Pine Tree Tops 476

By Frazier Creek Falls 477

Mother Earth: Her Whales 478

Why Log Truck Drivers Rise Earlier Than Students of Zen 480

"One Should Not Talk to a Skilled Hunter About What Is Forbidden by the Buddha" 481

Magpie's Song 482

O Waters 483

For the Children 484

As for Poets 485

from Axe Handles

Axe Handles 489

River in the Valley 490

Changing Diapers 491

Walking Through Myoshin-ji 492

Working on the '58 Willys Pickup 493

For/From Lew 494

Getting in the Wood 495

True Night 496

24:IV:40075, 3:30PM 498

Dillingham, Alaska, the Willow Tree Bar 499

Breasts 500

Old Woman Nature 501

The Canyon Wren 502

For All 504

from Left Out in the Rain

Poem Left in Sourdough Mountain Lookout 507

Seeing the Ox 507

Longitude 170 West, Latitude 35 North 508

For Example 509

English Lessons at the Boiler Company 510

Farewell to Burning Island 510

No Shoes No Shirt No Service 511

Poetry Is the Eagle of Experience 512

Calcium 512

At White River Roadhouse 513

The Persimmons 514

For Berkeley 516

"There are those who love to get dirty" 516

Sestina of the End of the Kalpa 517

How Zen Masters Are Like Mature Herring 518

from Cold Mountain Poems [Translations]

"The Path to Han-shan's Place Is Laughable" 524

"In a Tangle of Cliffs I Chose a Place

" 524

"Men Ask the Way to Cold Mountain" 524

"I Settled at Cold Mountain Long Ago" 524

"I Have Lived at Cold Mountain" 524

"In My First Thirty Years of Life" 525

"There's a Naked Bug at Cold Mountain" 525

"Cold Mountain Is a House" 525

"Some Critic Tried to Put Me Down

" 526

"When Men See Han-shan" 526

from Miyazawa Kenji [Translations]

Spring and the Ashura 530

Floating World Picture: Spring in the Kitagami Mountains 532

Cloud Semaphore 533

The Politicians 534

Thief 534

Sixteen T'ang Poems [Translations] 535

Long Bitter Song [Translations] 545

from No Nature

How Poetry Comes to Me 557

On Climbing the Sierra Matterhorn Again After Thirty-one Years 557

The Sweat 558

Building 560

Off the Trail 562

Word Basket Woman 563

Right in the Trail 565

For Lew Welch in a Snowfall 567

Ripples on the Surface 568

from Mountains and Rivers Without End

Bubbs Creek Haircut 571

The Blue Sky 576

The Flowing 580

Arctic Midnight Twilight 584

Walking the New York Bedrock 587

New Moon Tongue 591

Macaques in the Sky 592

Raven's Beak River at the End 593

Cross Legg'd 595

We Wash Our Bowls in This Water 596

Earth Verse 598

Finding the Space in the Heart 599

New Poems

Icy Mountains Constantly Walking 605

Summer of Ninety-Seven 606

"This present moment" 608

Chronology 611.

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

1887178902

OCLC:

41049499