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G RY
SNY ER
3 4
4
3
_no 3
BOISE ST TE
UNIVERSITY
BOISE IO HO
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Boise State University Western
Wri
ters Series
By Be
rt
Almon
Universit y of Alb erta
Number 37
Editors:
Wayn
e
hatte
rton
J ames H Magu ire
~ n s s
Mana
ger:
J ames Hadden
Cover
Design and Illustr ation
by my Skov Copyrigh t 1979
Boise Sta te University Boise Idaho
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Copyrigh t 1979
the
Boise State University Western Writ ers Series
ALL
RIGHT
S
R
S RV
D
Library of Congress
ard
No. 7953650
Internation al Sta
nda
rd Book No. 088430 0617
Printed in th e Un ited States of America by
The Caxton Printers Ltd .
Caldwell Idaho
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I. BACKGROUND
We thought that we had conquered the land, but we di s
covered that we
had
defeated
our
selves.
Thi
s
truth
, grasped
by nature wri ters and conservationi sts of the past, has become
clear to many.
Gary Snyder s work in poetry and prose suggests
that we can conquer the self and learn to live in harmony
with the earth and each other : the newest frontier is within.
Snyder s ancestors
were
pioneers in the old sense, people who
moved
out
west to make a living or find adventure. He is a
pion
eer in a special way: he wants to move inside the self as
well as Teach out in a non-possessive way to the natural world .
As T homas J. Lyon has poi n ted ou t, the American West is the
end of wh lrman s Open Road, and the traveler must move
toward the exam ined life ohn uir p.
7 .
Snyder s Open
Roa d took
him
as far west as J apan, but he now lives in the
foothill s of the Sierras of Cal ifornia, the stat e where he was
born , in San Francisco, on y 8, 1930.
His parents were Harold and Lois Snyder. H is family has
a symbolic value for
him:
he is desc
end
ed from the pi
oneer
s
who ki lld alI the cougar and gr izzly, as he pu ts it in one
poem in urtle sland ( Dusty Braces ) , Hi s paternal grand
father was a pioneer in Kitsap, w ashi ngto n, and his mother s
Irish stock flourished in T exas, Kansas, and Colorado. Snyder
concedes in the poem that he is as restless as th e pu nchers,
mi ners, rail road-m
en
he is descended from , and he will ing ly
gives
them
the
nine bows of homage customary in the Orient.
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for he is th eir se a roving/ tree heart ed so
n
On th e positi ve
side of thi s heri tage, he has observed
that
his Washington
grand father was an
organ
izer for th e tvobblies, or
V. V.,
th e Ind ustrial
York
ers of the
World
, the socialist and an
archistic group th at tried to organize western wor kers in the
early twen tieth centu ry. The Vobblies
and
th eir motto, form
ing the new society wit
hin
the she ll of the old: have an im
po rtan t symbolic role in Snyder s writings. The slogan sug
gests a stance that Snyder holds: the need to tr ansform socie ty
rather than to destroy it
Shon
ly after his b
irth
, Snyder s pare
nt
s moved to a farm
near Se
att
le, where th ey struggled for a living during the Great
Depression. He is fami liar wit h the h
ard
s
hip
s of farm life,
a fact to remember when considering h is p
ropo
sals for living
close to th e land . Farm work can
be
back-break ing and mind
destroying, h
ut
Snyder believes th at the severities come mostl y
in a cash
crop
economy; the sma ll, d iversified, and largely self
sufficient farm is a
not
her m
atter
. Snyder s mother had been a
wri ting st
udent
, and she enc
our
aged her son s re
adin
g. He re
m
emb
ers
tha
t the house was fu ll of socialist litera tur e
and
th at
h is mother wo
uld
read poe try to him, includ ing Browning and
Poe. A childhood injury turned h im into an
ent
husiastic reader.
At the age of five or six, he
ent
ered a burned-over field,
not
realizing that the ashes concealed live coals, His feet were so
badl
y bu rned that he was unable to walk for six months. Th is
stroke of luck, as he described it to Roland Husson in an i
nt
er
view ( Amerique, li e
Tor
tue, p. 226) , lef t him litt le to do
bu t learn to read.
His favori te books seem very
appropri
ate in retrospect
hi story and
boo
ks about Ind ians and animals. The writings of
Ern
est
Thom
pson Seton (1860-1946) were favorites. Seton, a
Canad ian na ture writer and la ter an
organi
zer of
the
American
scout ing moveme
nt
, was a studen t of Indian lore. Snyder sees
h im as a kind of secre t revolu tionary
who
changed the myth
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of the whi te man because he was on the side of nature,
on
the side of the Ind ians, on the side of the unconscious, on the
side of the primitive ( Amerique, p. 226) . Anyone
who
can find a battered cop y of Seton s T he ook of Woodcraft
and Indian Lore
in the children s section of a public library
will soon discover that this book from 1912 foreshadows some
of Snyde r s themes and attitudes very neatl y. Seton glori fies
the Ind
ian
way of life as being thoroughly sane, moral, and
hea lthy, w
hil
e he condemns white cu lture. The U.S. Anny
comes in for vehement criticism because of the role of the
cava lry during
the Indi
an Wars.
Th
e A
nny
wou ld have crucified
Ch rist if orde
red
to, Seton declares. Snyder, whose love of na
tu re began when he was very young, was recep tive to Setons
p ro-Ind
ian
and pro-wild erness atti tud es. He was aware from
childhood that the Indians were the prior people and that
they, like the land , had been despoiled. By the time he moved
with h is family to Portland, Oregon, at the age of twelve, he
was able to sew moccasins and camp in the woods. In hi s teens
he took
up
mount ain climbing and quali fied for an adul t
climbing club at fift een. After the break-up of hi s
parent
s
marriage, he held a
number
of jobs - copy boy on the Port
land Oregonian for example - and was virtuall y self-support
ing while in high school.
He ent ered Portlands Reed College in 1947. Reed offers
intensive and ind ivid ualized educa tion to
it
s students, and
Snyder undertook a combined Anthropology/ Li terature major.
s
bachelor s thesis,
The Dimensions of a Myth
is an im
pr
es
sive work of scholarship which an alyzes a Haida Indian myth,
He who hunted bi rds in his father s village, f rom a number
of points of view; ant
hro
pological , sociological, linguistic,
psychological, and other approaches arc brought to bear on a
single brief folk talc to ill ustrate its r ichness as a human docu
ment. Like so many Indian stor ies, this one (from John R.
Swanton s
Haida T exts
n
Myths
pp. 264-68) con tains animal
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c
haract
ers with
human
qualit ies -
the hero marri
es a goose
maiden and deals wit h figures like Raven , Black Hear, ami
Eag le, mythic beings who will appear in Snyder s own work
and elements of the shamanistic
que
st. Snyder con siders the
intell ectual and religious meaning of a simple quest narrative
which
man
y readers would find naive and almost formless. Th is
i
ntere
st in the so-called primitive wor ld view has been c
ent
ral
to Sny
der
s poems ami essays. T he influence of American
an
thro
pologists like Pau l Rad in and Franz Boas was i
mpo
r t
a
nt
because th ese men
defended
the i
nte
llectua l powers of th e
savage a
nd
pointe
d to th e value of th eir myths and philo
sophical assumptions. In Myths T ex ts Snyder was to dram
a tize
the prim
itive
out
look as
one
remedy for the
dil
emmas
of our times.
At
Reed
Snyder began to publish
p o
in the literary mag
azine, Janus and at on e poi nt even prepared a
pamph
let which
he later decided not to issue . Robert Ian Scott has
made
these
poems available, and he has no ted the stylistic influence of Ezra
P
oun
d s Cathay
and
the wor k of
T.
S. Elio t, along wit h the
thematic influence of Robe
rt
Graves ( T he Uncollected Early
Poems of Ga ry Snyder, pp. 81-82) . The terseness of Pound
and the allusiveness of
both
Po
und
ami Eliot are certainly
pr
es
ent in the early work. Snyder has said that D. H. Lawrence s
poe try was important as an influence because it showed th at
nature poetry need no t be gent eel. Graves is a
particularl
y in
teresting p receden t for Snyder. Graves pub lished T he IVhite
Godd ess the year after Snyder
entere
d Reed.
Th
e leng thy
tr
eatise constructs an
erudit
e theory of poetry and the role of
the po
et
from such sources as Celtic tree alphabets, classical
myth, and the anth
ropolo
gical researches of Sir j ames Frazer s
T he Golden Ro ugh Snyd er has
built
an eclectic personal
phi
losophy out of Bud
dhi
st and Amer ican Ind
ian
myth an d t
hought.
Lik e
Gra
ves, Snyder believes in a muse, reveres natur e, and
a
bhor
s pa triarchal civiliza tion.
Both
wri ters like to work from a
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van tage point outside the mainstream of w estern civifization :
Graves from Mal l
or
ca, Snyder from J apan and , more recently,
from his home at Kitkitdizze in th e Sierras.
Snyder s education needs stressing because he of ten takes
anti-intellectua l a tti tudes that can be misleading. In h is
Lookou t s
Journ
al
Earth House old
of 1952, he says
that one does not ne
ed
universit ies and lib
rar
ies/ one need be
ali ve to wha t is about, but he has always been willing to seek
knowledge from books and insti tu tio ns. He docs value ex
peri en ce and he expresses skepticism about the intellectual
heritage of
w estern
civilization.
n
Mytlls b Texts,
he
att
acks
the anc ient, meaningless/ Abstractions of th e ed uca ted m ind
and describes the usc of a ph ilosophy book as toilet paper. Lik e
Graves, he di strusts the Apollonian (intellectual) tendencies of
w estern culture, its
habit
of living so much in the ra tiona l
mind that th e natura l world is ignored or turned into mere
material for ex ploita tio n. But he is not a nihil ist, a man who
wants to trade civilization for barb ari sm.
His
pr
aise for th e
primit
ive should not be misunderstood.
On
e of th e great ad
vances in Vestern though t, an advanc e we owe to the
intel
lectu al discipline of anthropology, is the growing recognition
that there arc o ther modes of though t than abstraction , like
the concrete logic, as Claude Le vi-Strauss puts it , of primitive
peoples. Snyder p
ropo
ses that we learn from one group of
primitiv
e
cult
ur es in pa rti cular. the America n ndi an tribes,
who generally
mana
ged to live in the na tural wo
rld
without
dama
gin
g it.
Aft er gra
dua
ti ng from Reed, Snyder began
grad
ua te work
in anthropology at ndi ana Un iversit y in 1951,
but
soon dropped
out
to
pursue a career as a poet. An academic career, even
in the stu dy of oral narrati ves,
did
not offer the kin d of life
he fo
und
essentia l for writing his poems: manual labor in
the wilderness interspersed with peri od s of solitude and ron .
tempta
tio
n. l ie had alrea dy held a number of summer jobs
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as seaman, t imber scaler, and emp loyee of
the
P
ark
Service
du ring the excava tion of or t Vancouver. Un til his trip to
J apan in 1956 he worked
at
similar jobs, mostl y
dur
ing the
summers . He was a fire lookout on Sourdough Mou ntain
in
the Mt. Baker Nat iona l Forest. H e was also a cook , a logger
for the Warm Springs Lumber C
omp
any in Oregon , a
nd
a
trail crew worker in Yosemite Nat iona l Park . He was fired
from a look
out
job in Gilford Pinchot Na tional Forest as a
securi ty ri sk. T here was no place in the Forest Service for a
man of Snyder s views and background during the McCa rthy
era.
Interspersed with th is work experience, which is reflected
in the poems of his first two books,
R iprap
a
nd yths
T exts
was formal study of Chinese and J apanese at Berkeley, 1953-56.
Snyder had decided, as he told Nathaniel T
arn
in an in ter
view, th at Anthropo logy was concern ed with understand ing
human
nat
ur e - bu t then why go to ot her peo ple, why not
stud y one s own n
ature. So . . . Zen ( From
nt
hr
opo
logis t
to In formant, p . 110) . T he Zen t
radit
ion of Budd hism often
defines itself as seeing into one s own nat ur e, and it s d is
cipline of med ita tion aims at gaining a d ear percept ion of
the self and the extern al world . Awareness is one of the basic
themes of Snyder s poetry, a
nd
one of his favored techniq ues
is to present states of awareness thro ugh strong images given
without comm ent ary. Zen also praises the life of physical labor,
an attitude that Snyder shares. T he commitmen t to Zen grew
ou t of a need to find a living sp ir itu al tradition.
will be
clear from an exami na tion of y t Texts that Snyde r con
siders the J ewish a nd Christian traditions of the w estern man
inadequate, and he finds that the spiritua l tr
adi
tions of the
Amer ican Ind ians are not reall y available to no n-Indians.
Snyd er studied the materi al on Ind ian religion available thro ugh
anthropological work, but he wan ted the kin d of r igorou s
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trammg tha t study u nd er a Zen maste r offers. Hence his years
in Ja
pan stu dying wit h O da Sessa at Dairoku-j i monastery,
hil e
at
Berkeley, Snyder became in vo lved wit h the
lit
er
a ry scene in the San Fr ancisco Bay area. Poet s like Lawrence
Ferlinghctti, J ack Sp icer, Robert Du ncan, a nd Ke
nneth
R ex
roth had been writing in San Fr ancisco for some tim e, R ex
roths po ems, wit h their blend of Ori
ent
al references - Rexro th
is a fine transla tor of J apan ese and Ch in ese po etry -
and
descriptions of the w estern Am erican wilderness, were an im
portant influence on Snyder. W hen All en G in sberg, J ack Ker
mac, Phili p Whal en,
and
Sn yder were a
dded
to t he Bay
areas wr iters, th e r es
ult
was the San F
ranc
isco Rena issance
a nd th e launch
ing
o f th e B
eat
Generation T he crucial even t
was a po
etr
y re ad in g in 1955, presided over by Ken neth R ex
rot
h
at the Six Galler y in San Franci sco. Sn yder took
part
,
though
th e grea t eve
nt
of the readi ng was All en Gi nsberg s
reading
of Howl
J ack Kero uac s
T he Dharma Bums
1958) gives a
fictionalized descri
ption
of thi s fr uitful per iod in w est coas t
literary Iifc. I n this book Snyd er a
ppea
rs as th e exu be
rant
J aph y R yder,
II . T il
AP PR O.
C H
Up
to this time, Snyder had bee n w
or
king on the poems tha t
found their way in to
M
yt
s T exts
a
nd R iprap
T he pub
lishing hi stor is somew h a t mis leading. because
Myths
T exts
a
ppea
red in 1960, but was
writt
e n between 195 2 and 1956, while
R iprap
Sn yder s first
publi
shed boo k
1959) ,
cont
a in s po ems
written as lat e as 1958. Snyder p lans his vol umes very carefully
a nd ma y ho ld back a majo r pocm from publicatio n he be
lieves tha t it belon gs in a differen t book. The poem s in
ip rap
deal wit h a vari ety of expe r ien ces in t he wood s a nd a t sea,
wh ile M y t h s
T exis
is a u nified seq ue nce of poems in three
sections co nstituting a commentar y on
our
cult
ure and its weak
nesses. T hc work is probab
ly Snyder s fi nest achievement to
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d
at
e. I t is an exam ple of
the
m yrhopoetic mode that he con
siders most impor
tan
t in his writing. Mu ch of his ot her work ,
as in
R iprop
is
writt
en in th e lyrical
mode
and consists of
short sensuous
poem
s that have their own power but convey
less meaning than the myths and symbolic derails of the myth
opo et ie
approa
ch . In a Statement on Poetics published in
Donald 1. All en s T he w American Poely Snyder distin
gu ishes the
two sources of human knowledge - symbols and
sense impressions (p . 421) . Sense
impr
essions are texts,
while symbols are myths. The
poe
ms in ip r p are mostly
tex ts, while the othe r collection, as its title i
mpl
ies, works on
both levels. A forest fire in
ilfyills b T exts
can be bo th a
sensory event and a symbol of apocalypse and renewal.
n
Myths 6 T exts
Snyder explores the destruction of the
American wild
ern
ess by ou r society and poses some alt
ernati
ve
att
itude
s. The des
truc
tion grows out of greed, which Buddhism
pos
tul
ates as
the
source of all suffering, and the ogg ing sec
tion of th e wor k shows greed at work. It is based OIl Snyder s
own expe riences as a logger.
Th
e H u
nt
ing sect ion offers one
alt ern ative to the grasp ing approa ch to nat ure: th e reverent
and fruga l way of life pursued by many I
ndian
tr ibes. T he
p
oet
con
temp
la tes the myth s and pract ices of hu
nti
ng peop les,
The last section, Burn ing,
pr
esen ts a Buddhist alte rnative,
the
pur
sui t of insigh t rather than sel f-
inte
rest. T he work as
a whol e is an example of the pe rsona l epic typ ical of modern
long poems.
Un
ity comes no t through pl ot , as in th e tra di
tion al e
pic
, bu t thr ough the mind of th e poet as he describes
and reflects in rever ie ( d ream, he tells
him
self)
upo
n h is
experience. Snyder s experiences include a knowledge of hi s
tory, Indian lore, Bud
dh
ist teach ings, and
in
du myths, along
with logging
and
mountain climbing, so th at th ere is a constant
interp
lay of texts and myth s as he stri ves to understand the
ravaging of
natur
e. The influence of Ezra Pounds persona l
ep ic, the Cantos is everywhe re
ap
parent. But Pound s work,
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written over many years, never ach ieved completion, much less
un
it y.
In
spi te of Snyder s rang ing all usiveness, he sticks to a
basic theme, th e despoiling of the Ameri can wil
derne
ss. Lik e
Pound ,
Snyder believes that Occi
den
tal civili zatio n has gone
wrong, bu t th e root sin in
Myths
'
T exts
is no t usury, as
in
th e
Cantos but
the
gr
eedy assump tion that man has dominion
over nature.
Th
e ep igraph to
Myths
T exts
comes from Acts 19:27, in
which a young c
raf
tsman of E
ph
esus warns tha t the success of
Chr ist ianity will un dermine th e worship of Dian a, goddess of
the moon and woods. In Logging, Snyder also cit es E
xodu
s
34: 15, But ye shall destro y their
altar
s, break their images,
and cut down thei r groves. Snyder feels that a main source
of
the ecological cri sis is the promise in th e Bible that man will
have dom inion over th e ear th. D. T . Suzuki s essay
of
1953,
T he Role of Na
ture
in Zen Budd hism, sta tes a similar view.
Suzuki suggests th at the Biblical passage giving man rule over
na
ture is the real beginning of human tragedy Zen B dhism
P:
231) . Instead of seeing
him
self as a p
art
of na
tur
e, man
sees i t as raw ma teri al : Man makes use of it economically
wit h no sense of kin ship with it , hence with no sense of grati
tud e or sympathet ic a lia tio n (p. 235). Or, as Snyder
put
s
it , All America hung on a hook / burned by men , in
their
own prai se. An art icle by Lynn Vhit e,
Jr.
, T he H istorical
Roo ts of Our Ecologic Crisis, cited in Snyder s
Earth H ouse
Hold
makes a similar case.
H owever, Snyder is aware
tha
t othe r
cultur
es have also
tre
at
ed nature badly. C
onf
uciu s and his
man
-centered philosophy
comes in for crit icism in
il1y ths
T exts
and the poe t knows
that the mount
ain
s of China were logged without any J udea
Chr istian ra tionaliza tions. Moreover, it is impor
tant
to no te
that
there are Bibli cal passages enjoining kindness to animals and
care for th e land. Snyder s one-sided references to the s awmill
temples of J ehovah are less effective than his imaginative pre-
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senta tion of alterna tive d ews of na ture. T he ancie
nt
Buddh ist
parabl e of the arrow suggests that it is more effective to seck
treatme
nt
for a wo
und
tha
n to speculate over the more abstruse
questions of the man ufac ture of the weapon .
T he Logging sect ion opens with a visionary passage, a
kind of prologue invok ing the coming of spri ng and the pr i
mitive roo ts of human culture. T he first line of poem I, the
morn ing star is not a star, echoes Henry David Thoreaus
alden which concludes with th e suggestion tha t for the awak
ened mi nd the sun is hu t a morn ing star According to tra
d it
ion
, Bud
dh
a gained enlighten
me
nt
when he gl impsed th e
mo rn ing star whi le sitt ing under a Bo tree. For all its stress
on destruction , \f y s exts implies that an awakening from
egot ism a
nd
greed is possibl e. T he rest of the opening poem is
a swirl of lines abou t the p lanti ng of two seed ling fir trees,
ano ther ho pefu l sign, about the May Queen ceremonies of
spr ing - which Geza Roheim , th e Freudian anth ropo logist ,
suggested were vestiges of a pre-huma
n rutt ing season - and
about the ri tes of 10, the woman beloved by Zeus. 10 serves
as a hint t ha t the di vine can enter the human worl d.
Much of the ogging section is devoted to poems about the
work of cu tting down trees, wor k that Snyder evokes in terse,
image-sharp lines. In the second poem of the sect ion, the na r
ra t
or
awakens at d awn from bitter dreams and sta rt s his work:
250,000 bo
ar
d-feet a day can be cut down by the camp. T rees
become stat istics, abstract quant ities of materia l. T he devas
tat
ion of the f
ore
st has of ten been matched by the exp loi
tatio
n
of the laborers. T he Logging poems describe the
wo
bblles
who were beaten and m
ur
dered for un ion activities, an d the
misery of those who lived in shan ties d ur ing the Dep ression .
Poem 10 con jures up the ghos t of a ragged logger who wan
ders i
nt
o the woods from a Seattle skidrow, Fifty years too
late.
Th
e logging opera tions damage non-human beings also,
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cr
eatu
res whose lives are, accord ing to
Buddhi
sm and
North
American Indian an imism, as sacred as our own:
The
D8 tears
throu
gh piss-fir ,
Scrapes the seed-pine
chi
pmunk
s
Hee.
A black a
nt
carries an e
Aimlessly from
the
battered ground .
\ Vith laconic dryness, poem 8 goes on to tell us that Ma s
hed
bu shes make stra nge smells.
Yet th ere arc touches of
opt
imism in the section. Na
ture
has regenerative powers. When overworked farm la
nd
is aban
doned , fir trees begin to grow aga in , we are told in poem 3.
And
the lodgepole p
ine
has cones th at e
ndu
re forest fires and can
g
ermina
te afterwards. In poem 6, Snyder records his fa th er s
story of b
err
y.picking in Washing ton back in 1914. The
area
had been logged very early, bu t fine blackberries grew up
between th e stumps. The
poem
evokes the plenitud e of na
ture: we took cop per clothes-boilers, / Wash-tu bs, buckets, a
nd
all wen t picking. / We were canning for days.
Each section of
lyths
6-
T exts
ends with an apocal y
ptic
vision of change and renewal. T he bl e
akn
ess of the Logging
section leads appro
pri
ately
into
an apocalypse (poem 15) in
itia ted wit h a vision of catastrophe. Snyder uses the mythical
imagery of Hi ndu cosmology wit h its world cycles, or kalpa s.
The cycle comes to an end w
hen
Shiva, the god of destruction,
destroys the un iverse with fire. T he
Me
n who hire m
en
to
cu t groves / kill snakes,
buil
d ci ties, pave fields will be swep t
away. T he myth s say th at
torr
enti al ra ins will put ou t th e
fires and from a g erm of necessity for re-manifestation as
Hei
nr
ich Zimmer puts it in
Myths and Symbols in I ndian
r
t
nd
ivilization
(an important source for Snyde r s Hi
ndu
al
lusions) , the gods ami worl ds will be reborn (p. 18) . Snyder s
concl usion to the Lo gging
poem
s me
ntion
s th e cones of the
15
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lodgepole pi ne waumg for fire and rebirth, bu t the rains will
be imagined only in the conclusion to th e entire wor k. T his
sect ion ends clegiacall y w
ith
the possibil ity of
pre
serving the
wild erness through ar t. A painter who watched th e fall of
China s ;\ I ing dynasty is
quot
ed :
T he bru
sh
May paint the
mountai
ns and streams
Though the terr itory is lost.
Snyder s L
ing poems are such a paint ing.
T he
untin
g poems presen t a less somber view of the world
and cu lminate in a less harrowing
apo
calypse. The attitudes
of hunt ing
trib
es of North America are explored in
or
der to
give a new perspective on the re la tionsh ip of man to nature.
Th
e hunter assumes that the cr
eat
ures he hun ts have a sp iri t
ual value of th eir
own
. T hey are winged people and fou r
legged people, as the Sioux shaman Black Elk would pu t it.
The hun ter prepares h imself for hi s work th rough rit ua l exer
cises t
hat
may involve fasting, sexual abstine nce,
and
pra
yers to
th e hunted anima l. He seeks to understand th e natur e of the
an imals; an d the magic he employs to assure success often in
clud es the usc of songs tha t express the na
tur
e of the prey, as
in the op ening of poem 4 of this section :
T he swallow-shell that eases birth
bro ught from the south by Hummingbird.
\Ve pu ll out the seagra ss, th e seagrass,
the seagrass,
and
it
drift
s awa y
- song of the geese.
\ Vhen the h unt is successfu l - through the willi ngn ess of the
prey to sacrifice itself for human beings,
man
y tri bes believe
ex pia tion is
made
through prayers and offerings, and every
part
of th e animal is pu t to use. In p
oem
5, Snyder describes
the
ma
king
of a spoon from
mountain
goat ho rn in a passage
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that par
aph
r ases an account in Franz Boas Ethnology of the
Kumkiiitl
(pp. 102-04) .
Perhaps the finest works in th e section are th e poems
in
honor of bear
and
deer.
Th
e poem for bear, number 8. brings
tog
eth
er Snyder s own knowledge of bears wit h materials from
th e folklo re of severa l cu ltures. The poem tells one of the bear
ma
rriage stories found in many socie ties. A girl out picking
be rr ies mee ts a tall, da rk man who car r ies her off to hi s home
in th e m
oun
tains. He is one of those ambiguous beings in
American Ind ian mythology, a combination anim
al dei
ty/ hu
m
an
bein
g. Eve
nt
uall y
th
e girl s brothers kill her husband.
Snyder uses A. Hallowell s compend ious Bear Ceremonialism
in the Northe rn Hemisphere (pp . 49-51) , as the source f
or
th e
lines that th e bro thers call out to th e snared bear while Ma r
iu
Barbeau s Tsimshian Songs (pp. 130-31) prov ides the bear s
dea
th
song. An annota ted version of
Myths
T exts
wou ld
be very leng th y and somew
hat
ped
ant
ic. The reade r who wan ts
to become familiar with the sp iri t of Sny
der
s bo
rro
wings from
American Ind ian myth might read w
ork
s like J o
hn
Ne iha rd t s
lack l Speaks and J
aim
e de Angu lo s In dian T ales along
wi th some collections of American Indian p
oetr
y.
Poem 8. th e poem for deer. is particularly fine.
willi
am
Blak e s Auguries of Innocence tell us that
T
he wild deer.
wa n
ing here and there, / Keeps the
Hum
an Soul from Care
Snyder ironicall y echoes these lines
in
hi s accou nt of dr
un
ken
hunters who gun
do
wn a deer paralyzed by their head ligh ts.
Thi
s mod
ern
att itude is framed by
two
Ind
ian songs express
ing
the reve rence of the primitive hu nter for the dee r an d the
hu nter s willingness to dr
ink
sea water and Slee p on beach
pebb les in the rai n / Unt il the deer come down to d ie / in
p it y for my pain
Sha
man
ism plays an important rol e in the H unt ing poems.
Among many primiti ve peoples - Siberian tribesmen, Plains In
di ans, Eskimos - the shaman ha s an important social function.
17
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He is the seer of the tr ibe, the visIona ry who makes dream
journeys to seek supern atural help in healing or findi ng food .
Th
e power that he gets in his visionary jou rne y often takes
the form of a magic song associa
ted
with a totem animal. T he
opening
poe
m in H u
nt
ing is call ed first shama n song and
the entire sectio n cou ld be regarded as a set of shaman songs,
the record of a poet s imaginative
jou
rn eys in q uest of powers
to
heal
a sick cu ltu re.
we
mu st learn, as p
oem
3 put s it, to
See or go blind l
Poem II , en titled songs for a four-crowned dancing hat is
based on the shaman istic myth of Big-T ail, a story from John
Swa
nto
ns
ai
da
T exts
and
Myths
(PI 296-304) , the same
book
from wh ich Snyder took the myth used in his undergraduate
thesis. T he shaman, Big
-T
ail, descend s int o the ocean in order
to meet a supern at ural be
ing
called
H
e-at-whose-voice-the
Ravens-sit-on-the-sea a nd to ga in power in the form of a magic
hat to save his people from famine. Poem I I ra ther confusingly
blends details from this myt h with images from Hi ndu stor ies
abo
ut
Prajapau , who created the
earth
and
Vishnu , who took
th e form of a boar when he saved Mother Earth from th e
depths of the sea. T he poem
pro
babl y aims at showing the
un iversality of redemptive pattern s. Heinrich Zimmer suggests
that Vishnu is a counterpar t of the bodhisattva, a savior figure
in Mahayana Buddh ism
yt
hs
P:
97) , and bodhis
attv
as are
import
ant
in the Burni ng
poe
ms.
Th
e most pl ain tive lines
in songs for a four-crowned dancing hat are spoken by the li tt le
fern women of the Big-T ail story :
what
w
ill
you do w
ith
human beings? Are you going to save the human beings?
Such sayings symbol ize the fact th
at
human life is
sup
ported
by natu re. Shamanism assumes tha t nat ural forces can work
for human welfare.
T he next two poems move from th e mythical to the textual
level to make the same poi
nt
. In poem 12, the poet describes
picking a wild app le ncar a horn et s nest. He had the smell of
18
-
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th e mount
ain
s on him - he had been liv
ing
dose to na ture ,
therefore - and
none stung. T he succ
eeding
poem, ta
ken
f
rom
a J icarill a Apache song, describes
th
e
man
y p
lant
s, an imals,
and insects that the tri be lived on. T he catalogue of more than
forty items, ranging from deer to juniper berries, makes the
poi nt th at n
atur
e offers many possibi lities for the support of
human life.
T he Hu
nting
poems end wit h an apocalypse that recalls
Is
aia
h, a vision of all creatures living in
harmon
y. The last
poem,
num
ber 16, opens with a saying common in Buddhist
texts : How rare
to
be born a
hum
an
bein
gl
Human
ity has
great
opponu
n
ines
for achiev ing an enl i
ght
ened stat e. In this
poem, th e de
nunciati
ons th
at
closed Loggi
ng
( l\fen who h ire
men to cut groves ) are absent. Instead, the poet glorifies hu
man bir th , goes on to describe the mythical accou
nt
of
th
e
birth of the Buddha , and tosses in the iconocla stic commen ts of
the Zen master Chao-chou (778-897 A.D., who fo
und
the
story, wit h its talkin baby, tr
emb
ling universe, and rever
en t an imals, a little too sacch
ar
ine. But the myth, Snyder im
plies, expresses an import
ant
t
ru
th a
bout
the value of human
life. Snyder s vision of a world in which man and beast live
in ha
rmon
y suggests th e Bibl e, lion lying down wit h lamb :
Girls wou ld have in their arms
A wild gazelle or wild wol f-cubs
And give th em th eir wh ite milk ,
those who had new-born i
nfants
home
Breasts st ill ful l.
The meaning of such myths is compassion, Snyder tells us, and
all beings,
man
and beast alike, can be th e agen ts of compas
sion. In th e
Buddhi
st terms that he uses, all beings possess th e
Buddha nat ur e (uncultiva ted th
oug
h it m i
ght
b
e ,
all but
Coyote, the trickster god-and-buffoon of American Indian myth.
Snyder s ruling-out of Coyote as a pot
en tial Buddha is a
kind
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of wry allusion to the Master Chao-chous other famous say
ing. When asked if a dog, ncar cousin of the coyot e, has th e
Buddha na ture, Ch ao-c
hou
repl ied ,
wu
, Chinese for
No
The repl y goes against the teaching of th e Mahayana bran ch
of Buddhism to which Zen
belo
ngs, and it is usu all y given to
beginning studen ts in a Zen
mon
astery as a first subject for
medi ta tion, or k oan. Snyder descr ibes medit a ting on
thi
s
koa n in B u
rn
ing: poem 6. In one way, Coyote, who ex
presses symbolically th e mischief and destruct iveness of th e hu
man psyche, is beyond enlighte
nment
. In another way, he re
pr
esen ts the d ivine
prin
ciple,
and
th
e same American
Indi
an
myth cycles th at describe him as a clown or tr ickster also po r
tray
him
as a creator
god
like th e H indu fi
gur
e
Pra
j
apa
ti.
T he conclusion of Hu
nt
ing has
introd
uced
Buddhi
st themes,
and the Bu
rni
ng poems explore
th
e Buddhist view of
lif
e.
The
titl
e of the section is as am
big
uous as Coyote. T he Buddhas
Fire Sermon comes to m
ind
, the address in w
hic
h the sen
ses were described as b
eing
aflame with sensory craving, an in
sight
that
Snyder finds h is own terms for: Spikes
of
new smell
driven up nostrils, and Mouth filled wi th bright fluid cold
ness /
Tongu
e
cru
shed by th e weigh t of its flavours (poem 13) .
But fire can also represent visionary transformati ons, a poss i
bility th at Snyder uses at the end of the section.
According to Buddhism, the cause of suffer
ing
is selfish crav
ing
, which can be un derstood and el iminated thro ugh medi ta
tion . The
medit
a
tor
le
arn
s th at he is n
ot
a per
man
en t b
ein
g,
but
ra
ther a com
po
site and temporary collec
tion
of m
ent
al
and physical qualities.
When
the fict
ion
of a stable ego di s
appea rs,
the non
-grasping state of enlightenme
nt
is attained.
Selfish
cra
v
ing in
the form of eco
nomi
c greed has led to
th
e
abuses that Snyder dea lt wit h in Logging. T he Bu
rning
poems describe the practice of med itation and try to give a few
glimpses of th e enlightened state. T he shamanistic descen t in
a
myth
like Big-T a il has its parallel in th e poet s descent
20
-
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in to
mind
and body t
hrough
meditatio n, and the Buddhist
pa rallel to th e shaman who gains power to save h is tribe is the
symbolic figu re of
th
e bodhisattva (Sanskr it for e nlightenme
nt
being) w ho pl
un
ges in to the ocean of samsara (the realm
of birth and death) in
ord
er to save all sentient beings.
The descript ions of m
editat ion
, especially in poems 1, 2, 3,
II 12, often employ a
kind
of visceral imagery: the meditator
becomes aware of his body down to the level of the bones and
muscl es, even down to the cells all water / frail bod ies / Moist
ing in a quiver (poem 12) . The imagery for the levels of the
m
ind
in poem 3 is less successful, for to r
epr
esen t consciousness
pi ctoriall y is more di cult than to illustrate physical states.
But the aims of th e meditator are similar in each
kind
of med
ita tion: to real ize the composite and fluctu ating nature of sen
tient exis tence.
The
result of such a realiza tion is an awareness
of e
mp
tiness - the void.
In
Buddhism, the void is a positive
concep t, one of the three doors of lib eratio n. All of existence
is void : a sta te of flux in which
no
thing has a perman
ent
, self
su
cient nat ure.
Wh
en th e m
editato
r has an insig
ht
into
emp
tiness, he is on the way to dissolving the ego. Hence Snyder
speaks of the
e
mpty happy body / Swarming in the light
(poem
4) .
Snyder has never mad e any claims to enlig
ht
enment.
would
be aga inst the unpreten tious spirit of Zen to
do
so even i he
were enligh tened. For Zen , enlightenmen t is nothin g special:
Mo
un
t u in misty ra in, the River Che at h igh
tid
e: Things are
seen as they arc. Snyder renders
the
celebra ted li nes from Su
Tung-p o as it was no th ing special, / misty rain on Mt. Baker, /
Neah Bay at h igh tide (poem 13) . The enlightened sta te would
pr
e
sumabl
y be ineffable and beyond the rea ch of art. Snyder
wan ts to provid e at least a glimpse of it ; so he evokes an ec
sta t ic state of drug in toxicat ion in poem 5,
and
poem 8 retells
an epis
ode
from Jo
hn
Muir s
T he Mountains
t
California
Muir was sc
alin
g l\It. Ri tter and found himself at a
dead
end.
21
-
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A higher consciousness seemed to take over his body, and he
was able to see and move wit h enormous skill
h
Mountains
of California
chap
ter
IV) .
In the mythology of the Mahayana bra nch of Buddhism
those who attai n enlig
hte
nment but ref use to e
nt
er ni rvana
arc called bodhisanvas. T hey seek the enligh tenment of all
beings. Snyde r brings a number of bod hisattvas int o h is work:
Mai treya. the fu ture Buddha; Mau dgalyayana, who descended
in to hell to save his
moth
er; and Amitabha, the
udd
ha of
Infinite Li
ght
. Ami
tabha
vowed
that
he would never become
a Buddha unless all who called upon h is name could e
nte
r a
Buddha Land of his ma
king
. Snyder provides a
modern
ver
sion of Am it
abh
a s yow in poem 10, a delightfu l prayer for
hobos an d hi tchhikers.
The
bodhisattvas can seek to deli ver all beings because they
possess the Buddha-nature d
ormant
within th em, like the seed
with in the cone of the lodgepo le p ine, or the ch rysalis in the
table leaf th
at Th
oreau ment ions in the last chap ter of
Walden
(Snyder alludes to this parable in poem 11) ,
Th
e Burn ing
section moves to
ward
images of sexual love as symbols o f sel f
transcendence, ami the ecsta tic imagery of nat ure evoked throu gh
the
desc
ript
ions of back-packing in
th
e
mou
ntai ns has a simila r
function. In
poe
m 17, the
narrator
feels
tha
t he has reac hed
the M . Sumcru L.O That is, he has climbed the mythical
mo
unta
in at th e center of th e Buddh ist - and Hi ndu - cosmos
and can serv e as a fire watcher for th e
univer
se from tha t Look
Out
post. He sees a mythical fire: the forest fire dealt with
real istically. textually, at the beginni ng of poem 17 becomes
a
dr
agon tongue that Licks th e sun : At th e end of
Afyths 6-
T exts the
poet declares, like
Tho
r
eau
, that T he sun is but
a
morn
ing star T he
ud
dha
natu
re can be aroused; the world
can be tr ans form ed in a blaze of insight.
Myths T exts is Snyder s finest achieveme
nt
to date in th e
mythopoetic
mode
. is highly organ ized
and
t
hema
tically
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-
8/10/2019 Gary Snyder
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crew work of
pic
king up and placing granite stones
in tigh t cobble p
atte
rn on
hard
slab. \ Vhat arc you
doi ng? I asked old Roy Ma rchbanks . Rip rapp ing,
he said. Hi s selection of natu ral rocks was perfect
I tr ied writing poems of tough, simple, sh ort
words, with the complexity far beneath the surface
textu re. In p
ar t
the line was influenced by the five
an d seven-cha racter line Chi nese poems I d been read
ing, wh ich wor k like sharp blows on the mind . (pp.
420-421)
Veil-known
poe
ms like Mid-August at Sourdough Moun tain
Lookout and w ate r are writt en in a style so terse that they
could be mistaken for very d ose transl
ation
s from the Chinese.
T erseness is genera lly such a hall mark of Snyder s style that a
p
oem
like T 2 T an ker Blues, w
ritt
en in the sprawling Beat
manner of Alle n
Gin
sberg and J ack Kerouac, comes as a sur
pr
ise in iprap
For all th e importance of ph ysical labor in Snyde r s work,
moments of
repose and Zen-insp ired c
ont
em
plation
have eq ua l
va lue. T he poet describ es momen ts on moun tai n tops as o ften
as he describes bucking hay or pla cing cobble. Even the superb
desc
ript
ion of physical lab or in Ha y for the Horses is over
shadowed by the poignant remarks made by the speaker s co-w
ork
er a t lunchtime un
der
Black oa k/ Out in the hot corral. An
other lunch break, taken Above Pat e Valley; resu lted in one of
Snyder s best poems. T he spea ker, a tra il-crew worke r,
d is
covers arrowhead leavings all around
him
, signs that other men
worked and hu nted in the same region long before. Ami the
deer that come to the spo t to feed have created tra ils. T he
human past and present are subtly jux taposed with the timeless
rea lm of th e
an i
mals. The final line, T en th ousand years,
reverb erates because the poet has skillfully prepa red us for an
expe
ri ence of co
nt
in
uit
y as well as change. an awareness t
hat
24
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acuvr ues like working and feeding have a long history in th e
Sierra Nevada. By emphasizing concrete detail s at the expense
of abstractions, Snyder cu ts
him
self off from
th
e
philo
sophical
rumi nations of Vordsworths meditations on Tin tern Abbey.
e relies on suggest ion instead.
In Milton by Firelight , th e situat ion is again one of repose
aft er w
or
k,
Th
e poet reads Milton ,
and
Satan s
ang
uished rh e-
toric , 0 hell, what
do mine eyes/ with grief behold? seems to
come off poorly after a day of working in th e mountains. Vhat
wei
ght
does such rhe
tor
ic have beside the actualities of working
with Sier ra gr
anit
e to
build
trails? Wha t use Mi lto n, a silly
story / Of o
ur
lost gene ral
par
ents, / eaters of frui t . A nd yet,
the chainsaw boy comes riding down to camp / ungry for
tomatoes
and green apples, form s of fruit ,
and
the Sier ras them-
selves will someday become a kind
of hell , dry
ami
dead, home
of the scorpion. Snyder shows in Myths
T exts that he call
value th e symbolic stru ctures of religion as much as Mi
lton
did . Hut a less M
ilton
ic style than Snyder s would be hard to
ima
gin
e, Snyder av
oid
s abstract ions and ke
ep
s h is sy
ntax
simp le.
The poem s about J apan are less effect ive
than
the on es set
in w ester n America. The poet somet imes gives interesting tra-
vel impressions,
but in most cases the exotic scenes rema in inert.
The
Ori
ent al poems in
e ack Countr products of mo re
int i
mat
e knowledge and closer involvem
ent
, are far better. The
poems abou t the tanker
pp
Greek are also compa ra tively
weak. They are casually wri
tten
and have humorous touches
tha t ch
arm
without
quit
e sat isfying. Exce
pt
for Myths
T exis
all of Snyder s collections co
nt
ain some light , even tr ivial works.
H e told me on ce in a letter that the concept of the master -
piece is a 19th centur y tire some honky
notion
, and he quo ted
a Zen saying: Every day s a good day. Zen teaches
that
pick-
ing and choosing is a mistake , because every experience is po-
ten tia lly va luable. ut the value mu st be d
emo
nstrated for a
25
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poem to work. Fortunately, the percentage of successes is h igh
in Rip
p
After 1965,
the
Riprap
poem
s were
suppleme
nted by Snyder s
tra
nslations of Han-shan, a herm it poet of the Tang dynasty
whose nam e means
Co
ld Mounta in. T he
Cold Mo untain
poems were transla ted by Snyder in the 1950s as part of h is
stud y of Chinese. T hey show, he has said at a poetry reading,
the in fluence on him of the Cascade Mo
unta
ins of the North
west. Han -shari s Chinese mountain landscape and h is elusive
whimsical ways engaged Snyders imagination . The versions
are in the Poundian trad
ition
of following the spirit of the
origina l a t the occasiona l expense of th e l
ett
er ; for example,
anach ronisms (vsilvcrv
are and
car
s ) are used when the p
oet
wants to give contemporary equi valents for H an-Shan s sati ri
cal targets.
Wi th a few inter ruptions, Snyder stud ied Zen Buddhism in
J apan between 1956 and 1968. H is teache r was Oda Sesso
Roshi of Daitoku-ji Monastery.
In
1961, Snyder compil ed an an
thology of Zen tex ts in English versions with the aid of Kaner
suki Cut
etsu. T hi s collection, T he Wooden Fish is virt ua lly
unobtainable. Some of his J ap anese expe riences are reco
un
ted
in poems collected in
T he Back Country
(1968 , while others
are de
ah
with in two prose p ieces in
Earth House Hold
(1969) ,
Japan First Time Around a nd Spr ing Sesshin at Shokoku
ji T he latt er is a superb look at a training retreat held in
a Zen monastery.
In
compact and vigorous prose, Snyder p re
sents the concrete
deta
ils of
the
retreat , stressing
the
da ily r
ou
tin e ra ther than Zen thought, an approach true to th e Zen
spiri t.
Du ring h is J apanese sojourn , Snyder married for the second
time. Hi s first marriage, to Alison Oass. lasted from 1950 to
1952. The second ma rriage, in 1960, was to Joanne Kyger, a
fell ow poet. T his mar r iage ended in divorce in 1965. Snyd er s
thi rd marriage, to the J apanese writer Masa Uehara , has
had
26
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gr
ea t sign ificance for his writing. M
an
y of h is
po
ems since
hav
e
dea lt with their life toget
her
and with the
ir
sons, Kai and Gen .
Both w
rit
ers lived
at
the Banyan Ashram, an
expe
rimen tal com
munity fou nded by Na nao Sakaki on Suwa-no-sc Island between
Okinawa and J apan. Snyder s stay at this Ashram, or medita
tio n center , convi nced h im that communal living as a kind of
recapturing of tr iba l life is one alt ern a tive to mod ern aliena
tion.
In 1968, th e year that he ret
urn
ed to the United Sta les,
Snyder pub lished
T he
n
ck Country
his longest work so far.
Th
e
book
is p lann ed carefully with a division of Snyder s
poems
into
f
our
sections and with a selection of h is transla tions
of \ fiyazawa Kenj i s poems as a supp lemen t. The first part , Far
\Vest, con tains poems w
ritte
n as ea rly as 1957. In t
he
me and
style, th is group ing ov
erla
ps
bo
th Myths
T exts and
Rip p
Th
e openi ng poem, A B
err
y Feast: is a lmost a reprise of M ths
6
T exts
and mo st of the other
po
ems, as in Rfp p are either
descriptions of work exper iences or poems of tra nq uil con
te
mp
la
tio
n after labo r. T he Far
w est
poem s represent
th
e
l
ite
ral back country: th e
me
ric an wildern ess.
T
he
second sect ion,
Fa
r East, coll ects poems wri tten about
Ja
pan .
Th
e major work is Six Years, a seq uence of poems
wit h on e entry for each m
onth
of the year,
plu
s an e nvoy i n
which the
poe
t rel at es hi s re
turn
to th e Un
ited
S
tat
es in 1964
for
a stint of teaching at Berkele y. T he monthly poems treat
a variety of expe r iences, ranging from d
ini
ng out to work ing in
a mona stery
to
con
t
emp
la ting pi ne trees in the snowy hi lls.
T
he
poets evolut ion of a mo re fragme
ntary
style is clear in
Six Ye
ar
s. T
he
poe
ms tend to be wri
tte
n in sh
ort
phrases
r
ath
er tha n in se
nte
nces, carrying Snyder s
br
evity one stage f
ur
th er.
T he most power ful poems come in the third sect ion, entitled
K
aii and set in
In
dia , a
ba
ckward cou
ntr
y. Snyder and
J oan ne Kyger visited India and Ceylon in 1962, a
journ
ey on
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which they were j
oin
ed by Allen Gi nsberg and Peter Or lovsky.
An excellen t accou nt of th e tri p in journ al form , Now, Indi a,
was publish
ed
in a littl e magazine,
Caterpillar
an d a mu ch
shorter account was included in
Earth House Hold.
Snyder s
view of ndi a in his journal is remarkably balanced . H e saw
the di rt and poverty as well as the spir itua l strength of the
cou ntry.
In the Kali poems, misery dominates. Kali the Black
One, is the shakti the consort of Shiva, god of destruction .
Her depictions in art are t
err
ifying, for she wears a garland of
sku lls and ca
rr
ies a sword
or
noose. Often she is shown danc
ing on the corpse of he r conso
rt
, Shiva (see Zimmer,
il1yths
nd
Sym ols
pp. 211-15) . She re presents th e destructi ve as
pect of the grea t fema le goddess, n evi. Snyder s poems abo
ut
pov
ert
y and persona l loss in the
K
ali sec tion explore the nega
ti ve aspects of
life th at the goddess symbolizes. Bob Steuding
has poi nted out in hi s book on Snyder tha t the Kali sect ion
mix es the scenes of nd ia with the poet s m
emo
r ies of failed
love affai rs, so th
at
the sect ion becomes an expl
ora tio
n of th e
back country of th e unconscious mind : a tour of the hel ls of
the m
ind
as well as the hell of an underdeve loped country
Ga ry
Snyder pr .
12526) .
Th
e term Kal i can be taken as
an allusion to the kali yuga, the period of decl ining morali ty
ami
increasing misery th at precedes the end of a H
indu
w
orld
cycle.
n
Th is T okyo, the poet prophesies a time when the
vice and pover ty of a J apanese slum will be world-wide . T he
pessimi sm of thi s
poem
of 1956 is rare in Snyder s w
or
k,
and
it is balan ced by the next poem , T he Manichaea ns, in which
two lovers keep back the cold of the un iverse by lying in
each other s arm s like Shiva and Shakri.
And Kali is, as an aspect of th e Great
Mother
, an embodiment
of life as well as dea th.
Th
e noose and the sword can be used
to bind and destroy evil passions. In the T ann-ic cult of th is
goddess, she is reg
arded as a beneficent mo ther. H ence Snyd er
28
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ends
the
section with an imit a
tion
of a
JX em
by the eighteenth-
c
entury Ind ian poet Ramprasad Sen, who, in cid
ent
all y, is men -
tioned
at
the
end of Graves T he White Goddess
Th
e poem
opens with
the
con ventional Hi ndu and uddhi st th eme that
re birth is a dreadfu l fate. The individ ual is
bou
nd to a wheel
of suffering:
Arms shielding my face
Knees drawn
up
Falling through flicker
Of womb
aft
er
womb
,
through worlds,
Onl
y begging, Mother ,
must I be born again?
ut the
Tann ic
sects of Hinduism ami
uddhi
sm teach tha t
th e suffering of the pass
ion
s can be turned into joy. Therefore,
the IX cm ends wi
th
an affir
ma
tion of life th at ends the section:
Snyder says: you bear
me, nurse me
I meet you, a lways love you ,
you dance
on my chest ami
thi
gh
Forever born agai n.
It was d u
rin
h is tri p to Indi a tha t Snyder became a close
student of
Ta
n tra, an app roach used by cert ain
Hindu
and
uddhi
st sects. He find s the T arur ic app roach of Vajrayana
( Diamond Vehicle) Buddhism. a sect of Nort hern India and
T ibet,
part
icul arl y appea ling.
alth
ough he has also studied th e
T
antri
c practices of devotees of Shiva. T antra plunges
into
th e world of experience, and
th
e practitioner takes part in
symbolic rites
that
tran smute th e w
or
d of tile passions into
an enlightened sta te. B u
ddhi
st T antra, Snyder says in
arth
H ouse H old {p. 105) , is
pro
bably the finest and most mod
ern
29
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stateme
nt
of thi s a
ncient
shamanistic-yogic-gnostic-socioeconomic
view: that
mankind s
mother
is
Na tur
e and Na t
ure
should be
tenderly respected ; that
man
s
lif
e
and
destiny is
gro
wth and
enlightenment in self-disciplined freedom; tha t the d ivine has
been made flesh and tha t flesh is divine ; tha t we n
ot
only shou ld
but
do love one an ot her T ant ra bridges a serious gap in
Snyder s ou tlook. As a seeker of Orie
nt
al wisdom, he has stud
ied
Buddhi
st trad itions tha t of ten teach the tra nscendence of
th e wor ld and its pa ssions, while hi s interest in the an imist ic
attitudes
of the
Nort
h American Indian h
unt
ing tribes encour
ages a reve rence for
and
an involveme
nt
with the e
xpe
rie nt ial
world. For va jrayana, all aspects of life can be sacram
enta
l,
and all of life is i
nt
erdepend en t. Int
erd
ependence makes an
animistic view
phil
osophically pla usible: because all things
arc alive. as an
Ind
ian told J
aime
de Angulo I ndian T ales
pp. 241-42),
down
to
the
ro cks
th
emselves. all things arc sacred.
is doubt ful th at many readers will he turned int o T an n-ic
Bu
ddhi
sts by Snyder s poems, j ust as Pound s Cantos made Icw
if any conv
ert
s for Conf ucianism. Snyder s personal sy
nt
hesis
of
Buddhi
sm and American Ind ian lore is imaginative and ap
pealing, nevert heless. His grea tes t in fluen ce on
oth
er
cont
em
porary poets lies in hi s attem
pts
to make Indian lore and at
titudes ava ila ble as a s
ource
for poetry. H e offers his readers a
cha nce to enter ima
gin
at ively
int
o modes of th
oug
h t
tha
t offer
some alte rna tive views of the worl d, and that is the k
ind
of
con vers
ion
a p
oet
might desire.
T he fina l section of
h
Back Country
entitl
ed simply
Back. deals wit h his re
turn
to America in 1964. There are
tender love poems tha t come as a relief after the ha
rro
wing
poems of thwa
rt
ed pass
ion in
K ali. There are also some
ambitious long poems. For
th
e
Chin
ese
Comrad
es presents
Snyder s complex attitudes towa rd the Chinese revolution. It s
blend of detail s from the poet s yo
ut
h with simulta neous eve
nts
in China seems incon
gru
ous: Mao sta rts out for Bei
jin
g as Snyde r
30
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removes a girl s brassiere. For th e V est is a better poem, a
superbly constructed view of w est
ern
culture from the clas
sical days of T hracian girls down to
modern
America, the
contemporary oil blossom on the waters, a beau tiful yet pol
lu ting pattern tha t may fade into clear water. The cycles of
Occid
enta
l history, Snyder says,
are
all form s of the same ball
bounc
e rh yme. The last long poem, T hrough the Smoke
Hole, is one of Snyder s finest works.
He
summa rizes the cos
mology of
the
Pu eblo
Indi
ans and th
en
evokes their gecgraph
ical sett ing
am
i way of li fe in a span of two pages,
Then
th e
section is brou
ght
to an e
nd
with a
po
em about an oyster feast ,
a remi nder of the po t
ent
ial beneficence of na tur e, for it offered
the feasters ALL
WE
W
ANTED
. T he book began with A
Berry Feast, we should re
me
mber.
Af ter the fou r sect ions of his own work, Snyder provides a
selection of transla tio ns from the J ap anese of Miyazawa Kenji
(1896.1933), a Buddhist poet . T he versions arc interes t ing in
th emselves and as evidence of an interes ting a nity. The J ap
anese po
et
writes about pi ne needles, da ydr
eam
ing on the trail,
wo
rkin
g in th e fi
eld
s - themes strik
ing
ly simi lar to Snyder s.
;\fiyazawa Kcn
ji s
l wate
Pref
ectur e in Northe rn J apan was just
as
much
a fro ntier area as was Snyde r s back coun try of the
American Nor thwest,
In 1968, Snyder re turn ed permane
ntl
y to the
Uni
ted States,
bri
nging with him his wife, Masa Uehara, and th eir inf
ant
son,
Kai.
The
return coinci
ded
wi th two forms of social ferme
nt:
the
ecology movement and th e attention given to th e so-called
Hi
ppies. Sny
der
had been t
alkin
g about ecology for years, and
as a
member
of the Beat Generation, he
qua
lified as a
precur
sor
of th e H ippies. He bec
ame
a
kin
d of el
der
sta tesman - in his
l
ate
thirties - for
both
movements.
He seemed a
publi
c fi
gur
e for a time, giving readings and
le
cture
s, writing art icles, and ap pea ri ng on television. T wo
works on ecology ami social regeneration , S mokey the Bear
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34/49
on
Suwa-no-se Is
land
suggests that the tribal s
piri
t c
an
be re
captured
by
mod
ern d
ropout
s.
T he other essays explore a number of subjects, in
cludi
ng
Buddhism, wilde
rn
ess treks, books on folklore, ami Ta nker
Notes.
Two
subjects de serve special scrut iny - Snyders bel ief in
a Gr
eat
Subcu lture
and
h is ideas about poe try and the prim itive.
The
Subculture, Snyder claims, in an essay e
nt
itled Vh
Tr ibe, ha s been a part of society since the late Neol ithic, or
perhaps even ear lier. T h is is the traditi on that runs without
break from Pal eo-Siberian shamanism and Magdalenian cave
pa in
tin
g; th
rou
gh megaliths
and
Myst
erie
s, astro
nom
ers, ri
tua
l
ists, alchemists
and
Albigensians; gnostics and vagantes, r ight
do wn to olden Ga te Park. T he Subc
ultu
re has taught that
mans n
atural
being
is to be trusted and followed; that we need
not
look to a model or ru le imposed
from
ou tside in searching
for th e re nter. : The members of the Subculture ma y
have, dep end ing on the time
an
d place, practiced shaman ism,
wi tchcraft, drug-taking, yoga , Zen medi tat ion,
or
any number
of o
ther
tec
hn
iques for explori ng hum
an
possibilities.
The
quest of these seekers
aft
er illuminat ion runs counter to civil
izatio n, a result which, Snyder de
clar
es, makes
human
nat ure
suspect and ind uces the indi vidual to rely on the accumula ted ex
pe ri ence and working assump tions given by his culture.
nthro
pology, by giving a hearing to all sor ts of cult ural possib
ilit
ies,
enco
ur
ages the view t
hat
there are
dim
ens ions of li fe not un
de rstood by civilizations. Everyth ing we have
thought
abou t
man
s wel fare needs to be ret hough t. T he
trib
e, it seems, is
the newest d evelopment in the Great Subculture. we almost
uninten t ionally
lin
ked. o
ur
selves to a t
ran
smission of
gno
sis, a
potential social
order
, and te
chnique
s of enlightenment , surviv
ing from prehistoric times ( Why T ribe, p. 116) .
T he new triba lism is another term for the phenomenon of
the mid-s
ixtie
s that the press
referred
to as the H ipp ie move
men t Snyder
and
some of h is friends, such as Allen Gins -
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berg, from the days of the Bea t Generation were
part
of the
ferment of
th
at movement, While Snyder would surely not
r
etr
act any of his claims for th e
importan
ce of the Subcul
tur
e
that he traces through history, he might not be so optim istic
in th e less e
xub
erant present. There is an overwhelmin en
thusiasm in th e ar ticles on the Subc
ulture
collected in
arth
House Hold Dramat ic social
chan
ges were underway, and
while some att itudes have ind eed changed, th e mainstream of
America n cult ure has proved resistan t to t ribalism. In his later
prose wr
iting
s, Snyder has concentrated on ecological issues in
talk
ing
about
socia l reform.
In
Poetry a
nd
the Pr imitive, Snyder sees poetry as a dis
cipline surviving from ancient t imes, as a way of get ting in touch
with
th e in ner and outer worlds. I t goes against the aliena
tion from world and self that civilization in his view encourages,
with its tendencies toward specia lization, wh ich na rrows hu
man possihiliti es, and toward valu ing th e rules of the society
over individ ual perc
ept
ion s, Like R
alph
Va lda Emerson, Sny
der assumes
that
the
poe
t is a
re
prese
nta
tive man, an e
xampl
e
of human wholeness. (In an ea rly version of Poetry and
th
e
Primitive, delivered as a lectu re at the Berkeley Poetry on
ference in 1965, Snyder refer red a
pp
rovingly to Emerson s es
say. T he Poet, in which it is claimed that a poet s tands
among part ial men for the complete man. , , . ) Snyder praises
prim it ive cu lt ures for maki ng it possible for every member
of the group to perform most of the basic act ivit ies of life:
one learns what
bod
y ami
mind
can do . I1is own poems pre
sent a wide ra nge of human activi ties. including th e kind of
physical labor th at ra rely gets into
poet
ry. Snyder asserts t
hat
the poe t must be attentive to the fundamentals of life: Poets,
as few o thers, mu st live close to the world tha t primitive men
are in : the world, in its nakedness, w
hich
is fu ndamenta l for
all of us -
birth , love, d eath ; the sheer fact of being alive.
These ideas, which can be traced back to the Romantic
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is as likely to descri be grasses, bark-scale, or stones as he is to
describe mou
nta
in vistas. He is in terested in showing a world
in
flux , a world of energy vibra tions in the void.
Th
e first
poem of the book, Wave, opens with a t racing of the wave
form in severa l obj ects:
Grooving d am shell,
streakt throu gh ma
rbl
e,
sweeping down ponderosa pine bark-scale
rip-cu t tree grain
sand-dunes, lava
ow
Wave wife.
woma n - wyfman
veiled ; vibrating: vague
sawtooth ran ges pulsing;
veins on the back of the hand .
Such a passage seems at first glance to be rather obscure. Sny
der poi nt s to the wave-form as a co
mmon
patt ern in the world.
Physics tells us that is the fundamen ta l panern , in fact .
And th e image of woman represent s the wave-form, the mys
tery ( veil ed ) , the energy ( vibra ting ) and the ineffability
( vaguc - wit h a pun on the French word for wave, vague
of reality. Voman is both reality and the poetic vo ice (sou nd
is a pa ttern of vibrat ions ) . Snyde r s R egarding Wave is ind eed
ap tl y titled . Sound waves and ocean waves can be found in a
number of poems, and the image of th e muse and wife, the
wave with whom the p
oct
is joi ned in a sac
rament
al rela
tionship, is su
pr
emely i
mport
ant . Even the
birth
of the poet s
son, Kai, is conveyed through the symbol of dolphins leaping
from a wave, as Bob Steuding has po inted o
ut
Gary Snyder,
p. 139) .
uddhi
sm teaches that all things are th e voice of
the Dharma, or teaching, for those who can hear it, and the
title poem of R egarding Wave
makes this po in t: T he voice
36
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8/10/2019 Gary Snyder
38/49
of the Dha
rm
a / the voice /
now
A shimmering bell
thro
ugh
all . All
thi ngs
can
show the nature of reali ty, for all th ings
are intercon nected
and
embody the wave-form pa t
tern
.
n
terconnectedness is a major them e in th ese poems. Budd
h ism stresses
int
erdependence, and T antra
enact
s it in cere
moni
es. Nor should we ove
rloo
k th e animism of
Nort
h
mer
i
can
Indian religion, in which everything has a spiri t and every
thing has a kinsh ip
relat
ion . Snyder dramat izes
interre
lat ion
ships wit h severa l rec
urr
ent images in
add
ition to the wave
symbol. T he tran smission of seeds is on e
exam
ple, in Seed
Pod
s, Sours of the H ills, and Bea ting Wings
Li ving
beings
spread
seeds from
one pla
ce to
anothe
r ,
oft
en by acci
de
nt
- seeds caugh t in ha ir or fur. or excret
ed
after eat ing.
The
act of eating is itself an
import
an t in terchange. A food
chain by its very na ture links many beings. Poems sud . as
Song of the
Ta
ste and Shark
Meat
celebrate eati ng as a
kind of sacred act.
All the activities of life - sex. work . rest. feasting, be
aring
childr
en
- ha ve a sacramental q u
alit
y in this book.
The
act ivi
ties of commune members on Suwa-no-se Island arc described
with
intens
ity and joy in Rainbow Body, a poem whose tit le
refers to
the trans
figured stat e tha t an
adept
in the T antric
p ractices of the Vajrayana Buddh ist sect wants to atta in. T he
implicat ion of the poem is tha t the work and rest of the corn
mune members reaches toward such an ideal. The most moving
poems in th e book are the ones dea ling wit h the marriage of
Snyd er and Masa Uehara
and
wit h the subseque
nt
bi
rth
of the ir
son, Kai. Family relationships have an emo tional weight tha t
re
qui
res no knowledge of Ta
nt
ra to be fel t in full by the
reade r.
Many of the poems extend
th
e stylist ic tendencies of T he
ack Country The poet tends to use a broken line. wit h
images di
stribute
d freely
and
a
rtf
ully across the page. Some
of
the
poems
are
clusters of images ra ther th an a serie s of
gra
m
37
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8/10/2019 Gary Snyder
39/49
mati cally co
mpl
ete statements. Such practices work especially
well when the wri ter wants to deal w
ith
th e te
xtur
e and p rocess
of a ph ysical world closely exa
min
ed.
Th
ere is a lyrical
qu
ali ty
to many of the poems th at should also be no ted . Instead of
quo
tin
g American Ind ian songs. he m
ale
s up his
own
: the
second sect ion of Regarding Wave con t
ain
s six poems ori
gin
ally printed in Poetry as Songs of
Cloud
s and \Vater. The
tradit iona l t
erm
for a Zen monk is
uu
sui, li terall y meaning
cloud and w ater. In Spring Sesshin
at
Shokoku-ji, pub
lished in arth House HoldSnyder explains th e origin of th e
term:
is
ta
ken f
rom
a lin e of an old Ch in ese poem, T o
d rift like clouds and How like water. Something of the free
life of the Zen wande rer is conveyed by these poems, a nd th e
mo ti f of flowing, which plays a
major
role in the book, is
prese
nt
also. The poems celebrate clouds, landscapes. sexuality,
and the creative zest of the p
henom
enal w
orld
. Occasional
flashes of rhyme or consonance add to th e lyric qua li ty of
these fine songs of praise.
T hree sections of th e
boo
k are e
nt
itled Regard ing Wave.
The fourth and fina l section. Lon g Ha ir, docs not break
with the themes and images of th e earlier work by any means,
but it takes
up
the poet s return to the Un ited Sta tes and
ex tolls the energi es of the wild landscape. In arth House
Hold Snyder sta tes tha t Long hair is to acc
ept
, go through the
powers of
natur
e Hence th e yogins who worship Shiva, the
lamas of T ibetan
Buddhi
st sects, and th e ancient shamans all
wore
lon
g hair. Snyd
ers
Long Hair poems are an a
lTi
rma
tio
n
of the natu ral, and they had a particular socia l meaning for
American s when they were published . Long
hair
was taken
to be a
bad
ge of the Bohemian coun
ter
-cult ure, the so-called
H
ippi
es. Snyder returned to an America where the wilder
ness could still create visions of renewa l. as in All th e Spiri t
Powers Went
to T heir Danci ng Place, bu t there was simu l
ta neously the kind of anger and greed
not
ed in Snyder s poem
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about h is re turn , In the
Nig
h t, Fri end. Still, in Poke Hole
Fishing After the March, a conserva tive roofi ng cont rac
tor
and the poet could sh
ar
e a beer and some friendly conversa
tion , and in D eer T rail s he reminds us that the ancient deer
trails are still possible
patte
rn s of movement in spite of the
freeways bu ilt across
them
.
The Long Hair section followed by a set of poems called
T arge t Pr
actice.
Th
ey show tha t the au thor realizes that wh ile
every day is a good day, not every poem is a m
ajor
effor t.
Hu t some of these casual efforts have great appeal: Look ing
for Not hing an d Some good things
to
be said for the Iro n
Age need not have been segrega ted with the near misses.
In 1972, Snyde r published a limited ed ition of poems called
Manzanita T hese poems and others were collected with a
number of pro
se p ieces as T urtle Island (1974, wh ich won
the Puli tzer Prize for that year. T he news took some time to
reach the poet in hi s J apanese style hou se at Kit kitdiu e in the
foothills of the Sierras, where he lives with h is wife ami two
sons. T he move to the moun tains ap
pr
opri
ately symbolizes
the poe ts rommiun enr to
lif
e in the American wilderness . For
years he has been making h imself fam iliar with th e geography,
geology, flora, fau na , and
h istory of the area of Nort hern Cali
f
orn
ia in which he now lives. Some of th is knowledge comes
out in
th
e Plain Ta lk prose section of T urtl e Island the
brief essay, Wha ts Meant by H ere , provides a sketch of
the region . In his essay on T he Wildern ess
he suggests that
on e role of the poet is to serve as spokesman for the mu te
beings of the wild cou
nt
ry. T hey canno t speak for themselves;
so the arts can
pro
vide imaginat ive
proj
ect ion s int o th eir lives.
Th
ere are precedents for such projections, ranging f
rom
cave
pai ntings to the corn an d deer dances of the Pueblo Indians.
Snyder, it migh t be noted , has accepted an appoin tment to the
Cali fornia Arts Council.
Th
e poems in T urtle Island are mostly conc
ern
ed with serv-
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ing
his wild cons tit
uen
cy, by describing it lovingly, or by at
tack
ing
those who threa ten it. Poems such as A nasazi
pra
ise
the a ncie
nt
ones of the American So
ut
hwest, the
pr
e-Col
umbian Ind ians who were
u
p to } our hips in Gods, who
lived in i
ntim
ate association with natu ral forces. Unfortu
nat
ely, contemporary man is likely to leave T he Dead by the
Side of th e Road, to run down animals unknowingly on the
highways at n igh t.
Or
coyote cries may be silenced by the
government tra pper. One response to the situa tion is to try
to understand . In I
Went
into the Maveri ck Bar , Snyde r
te lls of a t ime he visited a bar in Fa
rmi
ngton, New Mexico, to
make
him
self fam iliar again with the folk ways of America, its
s hort-haired joy and roughness.
But
he leaves, ready for the
rea l wor k aga in. T hat real work involves living not in
Am
er ica, the coun try
tha
t Europeans have made at the ex
pense of the land , but on T ur tle Island, the aborigina l name
for the cont inent.
Th
e life he lives at Kit kitd izze is detai led in a number of
poems. In an age of confess ional poetry, poems in which
the author admits to serious m
ora
l or emotiona l weaknesses,
an age in wh ich a number of lead ing poets have comm itted
suicide , Snyder wants to affirm harmony and wholeness. F
ami
ly
love and tendern ess are described in T he Bath, and th e poet
even writes a Prayer for the Great Famil y, pattern ed on a
Mohawk text , expressing gra titude to the earth tbe elements,
the p lant
s, the wild b
ein
gs, the Great Sky. T his side of Snyder s
writing
help
s make
him
a c
ult
figur e; it a lso aro uses the an
tagon ism of some reviewers, who react cynically to such posi
t ive emot ion. \ Ve arc not , after all, really a ttuned to a poetry
of p raise, which may seem sentime
nta
l in the face of some of
the prob lems and horrors of the twentie th cen tury.
However, thi s poe t is aware enough of ou r losses and has
h
elp
ed to count them. He can express anger on behalf of hi s
constituency in a man ner wo
rt
hy of Vajra yana Buddhi sm, a
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re lig ion for which anger is an in
str
uctive and pu rif ying force,
even a f
orm
of wisdom . Poems like Steak and The Call o f
the W
ih
r condemn callous
at
titud es toward o
the
r beings, and
in Mo ther Eart h : Her Whales, th e anger
get
s out of hand
ami turn s the poem into a weak harping on glib stereotypes
( robots in suits) . More effective is the first logging song
from T oward Climax, in which the practice of clear-cu t
ting forests, taking ou t everything, becomes a metaphor (or
the Vi
etna
m war :
lea r -C:IIt
Forestry. H ow
Man y people
ere ha rvested
In Vietnam?
Clear-cut . S ome
Were child ren,
Some were over-ripe.
Th
e t
erm
, cl ear-c
ut
, has mu ltiple mean ings, of course. The
poet ironically r
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