Gary Snyder

"When Gary Snyder applied for the position of fire lookout for the U.S. Forest Service in Washington state in 1952 he wrote in his letter, "So I would like your highest, most remote, and most difficult-of-access lookout." He got the job and was sent to Crater Mountain Lookout, the most remote outpost in Washington. But this wasn't his first encounter with dangerous peaks." "This book, Snyder's first collection of new poems in twenty years, begins with poems about an earlier climb - Snyder's first ascent of Mount St. Helens in 1945. He learned of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the morning of his descent, from newspapers delivered to forestry offices on the slopes of the mountain. Climbing, mountain and backwoods encounters begun in those early years of his life set the tone and provided much of the substance for what has followed in the remarkable life of one of America's most revered poets." "Danger on Peaks contains work in a surprising variety of styles, creating an arc-shaped trail from those earliest climbs to what the poet calls poems "of intimate immediate life, gossip and insight" (some of the poet's most personal work ever). Included are poems that work with the magical lyrics of Old Man Coyote and poems in an American / Japanese hybrid, a form of haibun, "haiku plus prose," which will remind readers as much of William Carlos Williams as Basho. The book ends with poems for the Buddhas of Bamiyan Valley, which were blown up by the Taliban, and the World Trade Towers."--BOOK JACKET.

"This collection gathers the essays, travel journals, letters, poems, and translations of one of the influential voices of the twentieth century." "Gary Snyder has been a cultural force in America for five decades - prizewinning poet, environmental activist, Zen Buddhist, earth-householder, and reluctant counterculture guru. Having expanded far beyond the Beat scene that first brought his work to the public ear and eye, Snyder has produced a broad-ranging body of work that encompasses his fluency in Eastern literature and culture, his commitment to the environment, and his concepts of humanity's place in the cosmos."--BOOK JACKET.

A consummate work. Truly remarkable - a work spanning decades of the poet's explorations, across roles, identities and lives. Particularly notes may lay in the poem "Ma" and the inscription from the Buddhavatamsaka Sutra. Overall a great work, exploring the very boundaries and frontiers of poetry.

This new collection brings together twenty-nine essays spanning nearly forty years of Snyder's career, with thirteen essays written since the publication of The Practice of the Wild in 1990. Displaying his playful and subtle intellect, these pieces explore our place on earth. Snyder argues that nature is not something apart from us, but intrinsic: our societies and civilizations are "natural constructs." Whether through common language or shared geographical watershed, we are united in community. We must go beyond racial, ethnic, and religious identities to find a shared concern for the same ground that benefits humans and nonhumans alike. Snyder argues that this thinking will not make people provincial, but will lead to a new kind of planetary and ecological cosmopolitanism. . Twenty-five years ago, at the first Earth Day, Gary Snyder's speech in Colorado and his manifesto "Four Changes," included here with a new postscript, helped set the tone for our developing attitudes toward the environment. In A Place in Space, he continues his analysis, refining our role on this planet and calling for an ethic that gives moral standing to all beings.

Gary Snyder has been a major cultural force in America for five decades. Future readers will come to see this book as one of the central texts on wilderness and the interaction of nature and culture. The nine essays in The Practice of the Wild reveal why Snyder has gone on to become one of America's cultural leaders, comprehending things about our world before they were ever discussed in public. With thoughts ranging from political and spiritual matters to those regarding the environment and the art of becoming native to this continent, this collection of essays, first published in 1990, reflect the mature centerpiece of the author's work and thought.

Inspired by the ancient Chinese proverb, "There's nothing you can own that can't be left out in the rain," this collection charts the journeys of the poet from 1947 to 1985. This book is unique among Gary Snyder's numerable works, and the poems contained here are as broad in style as the compilation is in timeframe. With a new introduction by the author, "Left Out in the Rain captures the evolution of the poet and the man. Readers will travel with Snyder from the American West to the Far East. From Berkeley to Kyoto, his imagery provides insight into the natural world as well as the human experience. With the span of a few words, Snyder can reveal a universe and then two pages later deftly handle a villanelle. Sensual, sardonic, meditative, epigrammatic, formalist -- whatever the tone or structure, these poems all bear the indelible stamp of a master. Always evocative, they remind us why Snyder is one of our most heralded and beloved contemporary poets.

These Pulitzer Prize-winning poems and essays by the author of No Nature range from the lucid, lyrical, and mystical to the political. All, however, share a common vision: a rediscovery of North America and the ways by which we might become true natives of the land for the first time.

Riprap: a cobble of stone laid on steep, slick rock to make a trail for horses in the mountains. Forty-five years ago, Snyder's first book of poems, "Riprap," was published by Origin Press in a beautiful paperbound edition stitched Japanese-style.

"Gary Snyder joined his old friend, novelist Jim Harrison, to discuss their loves and lives and what has become of them throughout the years. Set amidst the natural beauty of the Santa Lucia Mountains, their conversations harnessing their ideas of all that is wild, sacred and intimate in this world move from the admission that Snyder's mother was a devout atheist to his personal accounts of his initiation into Zen Buddhist culture, being literally dangled by the ankles over a cliff. After years of living in Japan, Snyder returns to the States to build a farmhouse in the remote foothills of the Sierras, a homestead he calls Kitkitdizze. For all of the depth in these conversations, Jim Harrison and Gary Snyder are humorous and friendly, and with the artfully interspersed dialogue from old friends and loves like Scott Slovic, Michael McClure, Jack Shoemaker, and Joanne Kyger, the discussion reaches a level of not only the personal, but the global, redefining our idea of the Beat Generation and challenging the future directions of the environmental movement and its association with "Deep Ecology." The Etiquette of Freedom is an all-encompassing companion to the film The Practice of the Wild. A DVD is included which contains the film together with more than an hour of out-takes and expanded interviews, as well as an extended reading by Gary Snyder. The whole offers a rare glimpse of their extended discussion of life and what it means to be wild and alive."--Books.google.

"This present moment That lives on To become Long ago." For his first collection of new poems since his celebrated Danger on Peaks, published in 2004, Gary Snyder finds himself ranging over the planet. Journeys to the Dolomites, to the north shore of Lake Tahoe, from Paris and Tuscany to the shrine at Delphi, from Santa Fe to Sella Pass, Snyder lays out these poems as a map of the last decade. Placed side-by-side, they become a path and a trail of complexity and lyrical regard, a sort of riprap of the poet's eighth decade. And in the mix are some of the most beautiful domestic poems of his great career, poems about his work as a homesteader and householder, as a father and husband, as a friend and neighbor. A centerpiece in this collection is a long poem about the death of his beloved, Carole Koda, a rich poem of grief and sorrow, rare in its steady resolved focus on a dying wife, of a power unequaled in American poetry. As a friend is quoted in one of these new poems: "I met the other lately in the far back of a bar, musicians playing near the window and he sweetly told me "listen to that music. The self we hold so dear will soon be gone."" Gary Snyder is one of the greatest American poets of the last century, and This Present Moment shows his command, his broad range, and his remarkable courage. "--

""In this collection of interviews and letters spanning three decades, poet Gary Snyder talks with South African writer and scholar Julia Martin. Over this period many things changed--globally, locally, and in their personal lives--and these changing conditions provide the backstory for a long conversation and a lasting friendship"--Provided by publisher"--