Gary Snyder Books

I have some ambivalence about giving Snyder 5 stars for this work. I come to this collection of poems after reading "Turtle Island", which I liked better overall. It had a bit more of the wide-eyed innocence that makes the poetry more heart-felt to me, even with that whole section at the end dedicated to prose on how to make the world a better place.

I found several poems in "Mountains..." that I like better than the ones in "Turtle Island" - particularly pieces like "Ma", which takes the form of a letter from a mother to son. What I didn't like so much was the pervasive use of East Indian and Oriental terms, much of which had little meaning to me. Recognizing a certain desire on Snyder's part to "disorient" a traveller through the literature helped somewhat. But often I felt Snyder was abusing his "superstar" status to make these foreign phrases seem more important than they actually are. How difficult can it be to just say what you want to say without resorting to another language? Snyder certainly has many tools at his disposal - the sum of which comes under the heading of "Poetic License".

Admittedly, languages are not solid, and new words creep in all the time. Perhaps Snyder feels he is just doing his part to force the issue with regard to some patterns of thought he wants insinnuated into western english. But I don't think it comes off that way all the time. Many times it just sounds like: "Aren't I clever to come up with this deep-meaning foreign phrase that you don't understand". This detracted some from the total effect in the book.

Ultimately, that's just me of course. One must do one's own thinking on these matters. And since I gave the thing 4 stars, it obviously still comes highly recomended from my viewpoint.

In this work of poetry, Snyder has presented a perception of the world that has taken four decades of experience to put into words. But, this is more than a simple philosophical oratory, because Snyder came to write this due to the influence of Nature. This is a powerful description of Man's relationship with the planet.

Gary Snyder's epic poem "Mountains and Rivers Without End" is an epic work from an American Zen Buddhist pioneer. From Kerouac to the millenium, it is all there. His history is our history. Read it and get wiser.

Golden nugget from Sierra streams. Gold never rusts.

Written over forty years, MOUNTAINS AND RIVERS WITHOUT END is poet Gary Snyder's highest achievment. Here he has presented a perception of the world that has taken four decades of experience to put into words. The collection moves chronologically from Snyder's glimpse in the 50's of a Japanese scroll that gave the book its name, though his wanderings in the American West, and into senescene.

Decades of travel have exposure Snyder to so much of our planet, and this experience forms a major part of MOUNTAINS AND RIVERS WITHOUT END. Mixing ecological perspective with Buddhist metaphysics, these poems are a powerful description of Man's relationship with the planet. Snyder is supremely aware of how attached mankind is to the Earth, and how its ever-surrounding landscape influences peoples.

The final poem "Finding the Space in the Heart" is a moving retrospective of Gary Snyder's forty years as a writer, from his Beat poet days in the 1950's to the older man that he is now, using elements of Buddhism's Prajnaparamita-sutra, the so called "Heart Sutra."

While Snyder's poems sometimes do not succeed due to clumsy meter, a lacking that makes me give this work only four stars, they often move the reader with their sincerity and signifance. MOUNTAINS AND RIVERS WITHOUT END is certainly worth a read.

This is the perfect companion to Jack Kerouac's classic novel, offering a wealth of information, fascinating stories, and gorgeous photographs about the world chronicled in that novel's pages. But it offers so much more -- a richer understanding of Gary Snyder & Philip Whalen, as well as their poetic work, and an in-depth look at the times & experiences that shaped all three writers. There are countless books about the Beats, many of them quite good indeed ... but this is surely one of the best. The author truly knows & loves his subjects, without being blinded by any need for glossy hagiography. It's as honest a book as you'll find about these three remarkable men & their times. A very enthusiastic recommendation!

In his first book, John Suiter has produced a work that contributes significantly to the literature on early development of the Beat literary movement and to understanding the disparate characters of Snyder, Whalen, and Kerouac. Using the common experience of all three men serving as fire lookouts in the Northern Cascades in the early to mid 1950's, the author evokes portraits of how each writer was influenced by wilderness and the isolation of a fire lookout, and how each used the experience in his work. Drawing from recent interviews with Snyder and Whalen and others who knew them during the early 1950's, from previously unpublished letters and journals, and from extensive close readings of all three writers, the author crafts a portrait of the evolution of a literary movement, of a wilderness ethic, and perhaps unintentionally, the devolution of Kerouac contrasted against the focus and dedication of Snyder and Whalen. The book is illustrated with photographs of the fire lookouts and their locales.

John Suiter's work on the founding fathers of Beat poetry and prose is a marvelous read. Suiter takes us along the trail through post war America and ties together the Beat poets, Jack Kerouac, McCarthyism, San Francisco and the North Cascades Forest Service Fire Lookout system of the 1950's. Imagine the poet/Zen Buddhist Gary Snyder being blacklisted from working for the Forest Service! Do you want to know how Jack Kerouac got the idea for his Dharma Bums work? What was it like spending a month and a half completely alone on top of a mountain in the Pacific Northwest, looking for the telltale smoke of a developing forest fire? Do you know what a "lightning stool" is, what you do with it and would you like to see a photograph of one? What was it like being at the famous Six Gallery poetry reading in 1955 when Allen Ginsberg first read "Howl"? If these questions interest you, or if you want to know about the origins of Beat writings-this is the book to get. Author Suiter launches the reader away through Old Mexico to visit with young Robert Mitchum as Christ in a glass coffin and William "Junky" Burroughs, up through Yosemite to camp with Kerouac and Snyder, a stop in San Francisco at City Lights Bookstore and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and finally Japan and Hozomeen, and the Void from Desolation. A delightful Masterpiece of fact and photographs!

"Poets on the Peaks" by John Suiter is a beautiful and insightful book. The text and pictures hold your hand through wonderful reminiscing with and about some of the greatest poets of our time. The landscapes that inspired the poetry that Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and Jack Kerouac are famous for is staged perfectly throughout the book. It gives you a sense of time and place that makes you feel as if you were in those look out towers and you experienced that electric and quiet time. Learn, escape, and love with this book. It is well worth it!

Writer-photographer Suiter provides a literary portrait of Beat era poets Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Jack Kerouac in Poets On The Peaks, which centers around their early experiences as fire lookouts in the 1950s. As such, Poets On The Peaks provides a hard book to easily categorize: it covers beautiful Cascade Mountain scenes and peaks, fire lookouts, and literature and biography alike. The writings of these three juxtapose nicely with the photos and images, making this a recommended gift choice for the holiday season.

Gary Snyder has been an inspiration to me and to a lot of other people for many years now. This book is a joy to read because it gives us so much of his poetry, as well as his philosophy of life, nature and Buddhism over a course of 46 years. Much of it has been pulled from his various books, but reading it again after time has passed brings a new perspective and an added appreciation for the work. Thanks Gary, for doing the real work for all these years.

most of us first heard of snyder though kerouac's dharma bums. and i must confess that is why i was 1st attracted to him and his writings. but to list snyder as just another beat it not only inaccurate it does a diservice to him, his writings and his fearless intellect. snyder is not only a great poet but is also an insightful naturalist and a true zen master. this anthology is actually a zen bible for the 21st century, filled with enjoyable reading and great insights. these writings would make the soul of han shan dance, and sakyamuni smile. this is one of my favorite books. just reading it will lighten your spirit and make your soul dance with joy.

Gary Snyder's power appears to come from mountain, meandering and meditation. In this thick sampler we visit his life to age sixty-eight through notes, prose and poems. The soil of his writings range across a fire lookout station in the Cascade Range, a Japanese Zen temple, the engine room of a Pacific freighter, an audience with the Dalai Lama, work and climbs with Ginsberg, Kerouac, Lew Welch, and Nanao Sakaki, travel in Botswana and Zimbabwe with his sons. The essence of his power is nature. "Nature is not a place to visit, it is home-and within that home territory there are more familiar and less familiar places." Two sons, one Pulitzer, many other awards so far. He writes, he reads, he teaches. One hopes that he never tires of planting words in the soil that is us. If there are any legitimate Earth heroes, Gary Snyder is one.

Gary Snyder is an amazing person. He is an intellect. He is a poet. He is a teacher, a traveler, and he is a deeply spiritual man. He lives the life that we should all attempt to lead, a conscious thinking, methodical, contemplative life, asking questions arriving at conclusions and taking action.

The Gary Snyder Reader is a good compilation of his life's work, the variety inside includes essay, interview, and poetry. This book is a well rounded view of his feelings and belief's about nature, and that of the nature of the soul, the nature of man. I agree with other reviews written here about the power of Synder's writing. His is a strong voice which is able to make a terrific argument about everything from the history of the Christian church and some reasons for underlying social perils to making a call for more activism in one's own community. Make a difference, be responsible, see things for what they are, yes this is all there.

There is also the voice of pain, loss, suffering, anger, and very deep love. Above all else, one REALLY gets the feeling that Synder loves, passionately. Gary Snyder is an extremely talented writer and poet. The same voice that won the Pulitzer is still here. Do more than read and enjoy his works, read and be changed.

Snyder has a way of showing things in life, that the rest of us miss because we are to busy living. Basically I can't say enoough good things aboout his work.

The great thing about Cold Mountain is that he is transparent to translators. Arguing the merits of one Cold Mountain translation against another is like comparing a Gudo Ishibashi 2.8 shakuhachi to a 2.9 Mujitsu shakuhachi by Ken LaCosse. Both flutes will get you "there." But the journey will be different.
The same is true of Cold Mountain. Snyder is as good as Watson is a good as Red Pine is as good as Henricks.
Or like Dogen translations...
why sink a straw that floats on the water, when the moon itself rides in ripples beside the straw?

Riprap lets us see the world with Snyder's vision back in the days when Kerouac was writing about him in the Dharma Bums. The clarity, straightforward diction, and simple lyricism that have continued to characterize his poetry are all here in these early poems from the fifties. Astounding visual quality. Life in the mountains, in Japan, on the high seas. Cold Mountain Poems are translations of Han Shan, Chinese Zen poet. Han Shan stands with John of the Cross in his ability to illuminate the spiritual path through lyric imagery. Snyder's crystalline translations reveal Han Shan to us face to face, today, not some old exotic hermit but a vital presence.

This book passes the test of time because of its taut poetry and insight into the link between Sndyer's environment in the Pacific Northwest and his inner landscape. The second part of the book is priceless. Snyder's Zen practice and skill as a writer and linguist make him eminently qualified to translate the words of the reclusive poet Han-Shan, whose poems ring true today. I have read other translations of Han-Shan but Snyder's is the best. Its paradoxes move us in our modern times just as they must have in early China.

Amidst the poetry of the Sixties, Gary Snyder's early poems stood out as something very special, and are still very special. In contrast to the obscure and convoluted writings of an assortment of neurasthenic, super-sophisticated, and compulsive scribblers, types so totally and utterly wrapped up in themselves that they completely overlooked that insignificant thing hovering outside their window (ordinary folks call it the universe), and whose work goes unread because it is largely unreadable, Snyder's work came as a revelation.

Here was a poet who was very, very different - a poet who, far from being totally wrapped up in himself, was instead wrapped up in the universe. He appeals to us because, being himself wholly in touch with reality, he helps us get back in touch with reality ourselves. Ego is put firmly in its place, opening up a space in which the myriad things can come forward and announce themselves.

The secret of how Snyder was able to do this, of how he was able to bring us, not yet another of those obscure, tortured and anguished sensibilities who were and still are so thick on the ground, but who brought instead a sane and wholesome vision of the world, is all there in the very first poem of RIPRAP, 'Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout' :

"Down valley a smoke haze / Three days heat, after five days rain / Pitch glows on the fir-cones / Across rocks and meadows / Swarms of new flies. // I cannot remember things I once read / A few friends, but they are in cities. / Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup / Looking down for miles / Through high still air" (p.9).

Where did Snyder learn how to do this? The answer is that it could only have been in China. The poem is the perfect expression, in English, of that commonsensical attitude that grounds itself firmly in realities; that keeps ego firmly under control; that practises a reasonable, as opposed to an excessive, use of reason; and that is commonly found in the best Chinese and Zen poets.

To translate Zen-man Han Shan, Snyder penetrated so deeply into the spirit of Han Shan that he succeeded in becoming a sort of American Han Shan himself. The result is a poetry not of coteries, of academic and intellectual circles, of super-sophisticated and pretentious Ivy League graduates, but poems that have real meaning and that can be read with understanding and enjoyment by anyone

The poetry of RIPRAP and COLD MOUNTAIN, like the poetry of many Chinese and Japanese poets, is a wholesome poetry, a poetry that cleanses and refreshes the sensibility, and that transports us from the technoid madness of our own chaotic world to something more human and hence more meaningful.

There's real sustenance for the spirit in these poems. They're like "drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup." Readers would be unwise to pass them by.

This excellent compilation of personal statements includes some prominent and not so prominent writers, their work encompassing a range of asian spiritual traditions often in a way I define as "ordinary" folk sharings presented deftly and directly. Overall the editor (Susan Suntree) has rounded up an inspiring tribe of people whose diversity of thought and commitment reflect the very blend of activism and spirituality everyone needs to consider nowadays. A good book to expand the soul and connect in a none arcane way with the range of America's spirit. Nourishing work for the spiritually isolated and busy acolyte alike; terrific grounding for apprentice seekers and spiritual wanderers.

Wisdom of the East is a "must read" particularly for non-Buddhists. The essays are informative and readable. I was amazed to read the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights included by Ford Roosevelt - what a statement in 2008.

A great daily reader to keep by your bedside and dip into at the beginning or end of the day -- short pieces which focus on individual experiences of Eastern teachings. Contributors are contemporary, ranging from the Dalai Lama to scholars, experts, spiritual leaders, and indvidual practitioners. Funny, plain-spoken, or intense, these prose poems guide the reader to a deep awareness of the transcendent moments in ordinary life. I don't usually like "modern spirituality" books but this one holds my attention with its terse invitation to life lived in consciousness and compassion.

Highly recommended reading, inspirational, insightful, instructional, spiritual and wise. This book is wonderful for those, like myself, who are not familiar with the Asian spiritual philosophy, religion and traditions. Your guides are the authors of each short story, giving a glimpse into how their own lives have been changed by believing in this extraordinary way of life. This book breaks down lifes complications (which we create) into a beautiful simplicity and I found myself being calmed by the reading experience. I really connected with this book and pick it up often just to re-connect with this peaceful perspective on life and living it. Stories of compassion, inspiration and love, well said.

Gary Snyder is able to capture in simple words and clear imagery the essence of many of the conditions found in his adopted home in northern California. He recognises problems and poses solutions that are not only reasonable, but possible. This book should be read by anyone concerned with the present state of affairs as regards both the local and the national environment.

These essays, including those written as talks or prefaces to other people's books, are in no sense minor. They are often distillations--not so much argument as succinct statements of profound if still largely unacknowledged truths, simply and generously interwoven with history, anecdote, example, biography and autobiography.

Though there may appear to be no unifying theme, and though the specific subject of the role of fire in healthy forests recurs, this volume is a whole defined by itself, and by the quality of Snyder's observation, thought and expression. For me, the connection between his immersion in East Asian writing, in Buddhism, in the realities of living and working in the natural world, in American literature (Native and non-Native), and his own writing and approach to the world, has never been clearer. That impression is nourished by reading together such essays as "Ecology, Literature and the New World Disorder," "Thinking Toward the Thousand Year Forest Plan," "The Mountain Spirit's True (No) Nature," "Writers and the War Against Nature," "Coyote Makes Things Hard."

Some pieces are short and specific, and thanks to Snyder's writing, evocative, including a short piece on the death of one of the best known of his fellow poets who began in the "Beat" era, Allen Ginsberg, and a fond and informative remembrances of one of the least known, Philip Zenshin Whalen. But even these are important because of Snyder's knowledge of them and perspective over time. Others about particular people and places (especially about Snyder's own family, as in "Helen Callicotte's Stone in Kansas") are also fun to read, but always connect to larger mysteries.

In these essays Snyder writes with warmth as well as pith, and with occasional bursts of exuberant humor. He writes with specific humility, yet is not afraid to state the largest possible conclusions: "These environmental histories are cautionary. They tell us that our land planning must extend ahead more than a few decades. Even a few centuries may be insufficient."

For me, there is another key to these essays in this observation: "Song, story and dance are fundamental to all later `civilized' culture," Snyder writes. "Performance is of key importance because this phenomenal world and all life is, of itself, not a book but a performance."

So these essays can be read as performances, expressing knowledge and experience from a specific, highly varied yet integrated life. This is a book of an Elder, in the old sense. I read it with admiration and gratitude.

Snyder has lived in the Sierra Nevada foothills since 1970. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1975 for "Turtle Island," he has twice been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, in 1992 and 2005. He is a recipient of the Bollingen Poetry Prize, the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2004 Japanese Masaoka Shiki International Haiku Grand Prize.

His latest book, "Back on the Fire" ($24 in hardcover from Shoemaker and Hoard), features recent essays, most previously published, that intermingle autobiography, reflections on the place of the writer in the modern world and a concern that those who have benefited from the natural world (all of us) become more thankful and "give something back."

Snyder sees the world through Daoist-Confucian-Mahayana Buddhist eyes and has little patience for those who romanticize nature with their "quasi-religious pantheistic landscape enthusiasms." In Snyder's "literature of the environment," "we will necessarily be exploring the dark side of nature -- nocturnal, parasitic energies of decomposition and their human parallels." He adds, in another essay: "Nature is not fuzzy and warm. Nature is vulnerable, but it is also tough, and it will inevitably be last up at bat."

Many of the essays deal with the forest, and fire, as a kind of symbol of changing public policy toward the wilderness. "Our wild forests have long had an elegant and self-sustaining nutrient and energy cycle, and staying within that should be a key measure of true sustainability." Periodic low-level fires are necessary for keeping the forest healthy; logging practices that remove the surviving trees after a major fire make it more difficult for the forest to sustain itself. Just as governments have to think in terms of thousands of years in dealing with nuclear waste, Snyder writes, we ought to be thinking of a "thousand year forest plan" as well. Ecology is about process, "a creation happening constantly in each moment. A close term in East Asian philosophy is the word Dao, the Way, dô in Japanese." As he writes in a poem, "--Nature not a book, but a performance, a / high old culture."

The art Snyder advocates "takes nothing from the world; it is a gift and an exchange. It leave the world nourished." "We study the great writings of the Asian past," he writes, "so that we might surpass them today. We hope to create a deeply grounded contemporary literature of nature that celebrates the wonder of our natural world, that draws on and makes beauty of the incredibly rich knowledge gained from science, and that confronts the terrible damage being done today in the name of progress and the world economy."

One November day, Snyder has cleared brush from around his house and sets fire to the pile. "Clouds darkening up from the West, a breeze, a Pacific storm headed this way. Let the flames finish their work -- a few more limb-ends and stubs around the edge to clean up, a few more dumb thoughts and failed ideas to discard -- I think -- this has gone on for many lives!

"How many times / have I thrown you / back on the fire."

Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

This is my favorite book in the world. Period. Why? I suppose the attraction is Snyder's diamond cutter clarity and surface simplicity, coupled with his rhythmic West Coast venacular - this work woke me from my own "dogmatic slumber" and set me on a lifetime of travel.

Snyder may have been a Beat, but I would argue, only vicariously - that is, while some of the other "Beats" became verbose and morbidly self-absorbed, Snyder on the other hand conitnued to live according to his own quirky, West Coast intuitive understanding of the universe (learned from mountain peaks and bear droppings) beyond the modern materialistic social matrix that many of us find ourselves being gobbled up by. Here, Snyder offers us an alternative, or a reminder, that there are other ways to live, not just according to rigid social taboos; as such, he continues to influence many young people, even until today.

More importantly, perhaps, is that while many writers dabbled in Zen, Snyder LIVED it, moving to Kyoto in 1956 to study Rinzai Zen, and remaining in Japan on and off until to 1968.

The work that most moves me is "Tanker Notes." These stark prose/poetry journal entries were obviously written by someone who PRACTICES what they preach, with a keen, Zen-like attention to the task at hand, whether cleaning a ship valve or conversing with a drunken crew mate. In this sense, Snyder is a true boddhisattva, a real Dharma Bum, and what I like most about Snyder his is earthy honesty. He is not afraid to "go off course" so to speak, like (say) a drunken stupor or sampling the local nightlife in some exortic port - he wants to EXPERIENCE the world.

I cannot recommend this book enough. It you don't "get it," don't fret - it is not for everyone...but I think the fact that he travelled, studied, and returned to teach about environmental studies at UC Davis shows that Snyder, though at times blissfully playful and at peace in the universe, has a serious side as well.

Buy it today!

From the outset, I have to say that I like Gary Snyder a lot. Less pretentious than Ferlenghetti and more perceptive than Ginsberg, his poems are like modern haiku, brilliant observations and juxtapositions that somehow manage to express what most artists simply cannot.

_Earth House Home_ is a collection of Snyder's prose, which happily enjoys the same distinction. It's an eclectic mix, with journal excerpts that read more like rough notes for poetry; book reviews that illuminate their subjects from unexpected angles; an account of day-to-day life at a Zen temple in Kyoto; and more, concluding with my favourite section, an almost Joycean account of Snyder's views on society and culture.

Get this, any way you can. You won't regret it. Also recommended for those just discovering Synder: _No Nature_, a 'collected works' of sorts.

An outstanding collection of daily entries on hiking and climbing expeditions, where Kerouac, Whalen and others go up Mt. Crater, on Buddhist and Hindu ideas, on his trip to India with Orlovsky and Ginsberg and near the end of this journal; some essays on the new emerging psychedelic subculture - the 1967 Human Be-In, the subculture which existed throughout antiquity of the Gnosis, mystics, community and tribe. The idea of a matrilineal society, tribal, indigenous and I can so much relate to this type of open consciousness, the opening of the doors of perception in nature and mother earth and loving each other in emptiness - concept free- moments of the mind. I was also moved by his experience in an Ashram on a Japanese Island.

It's the year 2006 and its all new material for me. It seems I personally know Snyder when reading this. Much of the beats bring you right with them. I see what moved John Suiter in his "Poets Peaks," as I am hiking up New Jersey and New York Mountains I can feel much of these words.

I only regret that I was not with Snyder and the beats, that I have not been in certain areas of the East, that I was not with the later tribal communities; such communities that were far removed from today's one-sided Manichean society. The difference is in the level of consciousness; one aware of role playing identities, the other lost in subjectivity.

"A lot of it is simply being aware of the clouds and wind."

Finally, a scholar has dug through the pop culture mud of the Beats to bedrock below: They weren't just citified tea-heads as Life magazine in the Fifties (and too many academics since) would have us believe. These writers were deeply tuned into the natural world and drew upon it for inspiration and some of their best writing--even the seemingly most urban of the lot--Kerouac. Case and point: Kerouac's "greening" in "Dharma Bums." Phillips' discussion of this novel is especially astute; and it sent me digging for my old copy. Similarly, Phillips' treatment of the Beats and Buddhism (Snyder in particular) is also refreshingly clear and original--not an easy thing to do. Phillips' research, including interviews with McClure, Welch and Snyder, is thorough and convincing. Moreover, his prose is sharp and unencumbered with trendy jargon. I predict Beat scholars will reconsider certain assumptions upon reading this book--and Beat fans will find this to be a unique and excellent addition to the ever-growing Beat canon.

Wow- what a book. This book sheds new light on a topic I feel has already been covered. Phillips' personal interviews are fantastic. I would love to have Phillips for a professor, wait- I do. Phillips is the man, and so is his book. If you are reading this Dr. Phillips can I have a 4.0? You know who I am!

The author sheds light on a side of the beat culture
which has been ignored by the mass media for far too
long. Many a word has been written about the Beat's
frontal attack upon the sleepy surburban world of
America circa late 1950s, but few have bottered to
examine their spiritual awareness as related to Mother
Earth. They were fresh voices who found spiritual
rebirth through nature and were in the forefront of
those questioning the prevalent doctrine of consummerism.
I would heartily recommend this well written book.

Stunning photos and thoughtful writings make this book refreshing and unique. Opening the Mountain has a beautiful zen-like quality that takes the reader on an unforgettable journey. This is a fantastic book to own and would also be a great gift for a loved one!

An evocative book, one to spend time with. Comprised of photos of the walk, some of which are achingly beautiful, poems, essays and sutras, it pulls you in at many levels, leaves you inspired to take this walk yourself, or perhaps to create one like it.

This book is funny and serious, spiritual and secular, historical and in the now, and just a plain great read. The fotos alone are worth the price, but the whole experience made me feel as if I had just circumambulated Mt Tam myself.

I had to read many of the poems in this volume while taking a college course in Beat Literature, but in this reviewer's opinion the careful, Eastern-oriented poetry by Snyder has a mystical quality sorely lacking in poetry by writers like Kerouac, Corso, Ferlinghetti and even Ginsberg. Snyder captures the mountains of the pacific northwest, human relationships, campfires, and the mysteries of the far east in a careful and understated style. He sometimes makes use of the ancient Japanese style of haiku, and in all of his poems he seems to have rich, abundant ideas which he is able to convey in relatively few words. I have come back to this volume repeatedly over the years, and it always reveals a new secret and joy each time. Think of Snow Falling on Cedars in poetry form.

This collection of poetry changed my life, I was deeply engaged with each installment!