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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best of Gary Snyder, America's Zen Po, 15 Jul 2004
I first heard of Gary Snyder when I stumbled across his answer to the question as to whether he would rather hear a poem by a raccoon or a possum. Snyder's answer was: "A raccoon's poem is alert and inquisitive, and amazes you by what a mess it makes. A possum's poem seems sort of slow and dumb at first, but then it rolls over. When you get close to it, it spits in your eye." I am not sure there is a clear cut answer there, but then Snyder, who received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1975 for "Turtle Island," was first identified with the Beat movement before becoming an important spokesperson for communal living and ecological activism, so expecting him to choose between animal poems is probably a tad ambitious.Snyder's poetry embodies the open-form experimentation of Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, as well as various "naked poetry" schools and movements from the 1960s to the present. He has also been strongly influenced at times by Japanese haikus and has listed among his influential/favorite poets Du Fu, Lorca, Basho, Pound, Yeats, Buson, Bai Ju-yi, Li He, Su Shih, Homer, Mira Bhai, and Kalidasa. Called by many a "Zen poet," Snyder's work is as likely to display a sense of humor as it is to deal with theological and aesthetic elements drawn from Zen and classical Japanese culture (e.g, "Axe Handles"). Snyder's earliest poems deal with the images and experiences he had working as a logger and ranger in the Pacific Northwest, which obviously instilled in him a love for not only nature but that which is ancient and mystical (e.g, "For All"). Of course, with a poet, it is always best to let the author speak in their own voice: "How Poetry Comes to Me" It comes blundering over the
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light "No Nature: New and Selected Poems" contains parts of eight earlier published books by Snyder. This particular volume, published in 1992 and nominated for a National Book Award, contains an impressive selection of Snyder's best work across his long career.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Indispensable, 4 Mar 1999
By A Customer
John Berryman said that the art of poetry was that of developing a personality in words. Gary Snyder is one of the most recognizable and fascinating poetic personalities of our time. Even when he is absent, he is present -- the details he chooses to focus on, the way of perceiving embodied by the poems, tell us as much about his mind ("a mind like compost," as he writes) as any work by the so-called "confessional" poets; but rather than concentrate on tawdry details and domestic crises, Snyder is more interested in the possibilities of mindfulness, the various ways of living well in the world, of carrying out "the real work". Constantly preoccupied, even obsessed, with questions of what to keep and what to throw out, where to withdraw and where to stand firm (see "Front Lines"), Snyder is engaged in the perpetual task of literature: to save what is worth saving, to make it fresh and pass it along. And his ability to find just the right rhythms and words for every situation, sensation or idea is remarkable. I admire him greatly and am grateful for his work.
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1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Snyder, remains as always, the subject of his poetry., 14 Aug 1998
By A Customer
Nowhere in modern poetry is there a poet who sells himself as much as Snyder. His poetry is rarely original and largely, embarassingly pillaged from various other systems and styles, both past and present. He is a preacher first, poet last. He is hell bent on advising the proper ways to live on the earth. Yet every path the man has taken has been to glean from others, to co-opt. We are still waiting for the real Gary Snyder to please stand up. He salutes the cultures of indigenous peoples - but uses their cultures not to help develop his own voice and to make universal connections, but to celebrate their cultures in such a way as to appear to understand them better than they understand themselves, in other words, to be their spokeman. He has a wooden ear for language, except for a handful of early poems. At this point in his career he sells himself with the expert help of an astute agent - as "the first West coast nature poet - which is not true, and attempts to question and qualify the likes of Thoreau. He has produced very little work - most of it recycled over and over in his books. He has a holier-than-thou attitude about people in general which he celebrates with an ego that should by now have proved rather boring to most serious readers. But again, Snyder represents a poet who has gotten to where he now stands by calculated living in other people's worlds and then attributing those other worlds as his - via his writing. Someone who spends all his waking hours championing and spreading his name is obviously working like a devil to get immortalized. Look through all his books - listen for universal voices, try to get beyond Snyder - it can't be done. He should be happy that he has written a few good poems and get on with storytelling, his real strength, if any. We are happy that Snyder loves himself and his life - but sorry he lacks compassion and authentic connection.
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