Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder
Gary Snyderis an American man of letters. Perhaps best known as a poet, he is also an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. He has been described as the "poet laureate of Deep Ecology". Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the American Book Award. His work, in his various roles, reflects an immersion in both Buddhist spirituality and nature. Snyder has translated literature into English from ancient Chinese and modern Japanese. For many years, Snyder served...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth8 May 1930
CountryUnited States of America
It gave a sense of the possibilities of an alternative culture. And it wasn't just poetry that moved people. It was the sense of a community, of people with a vision.
Like, when we did Parliament and Funkadelic and Bootsy, it was actually one thing. But there were so many people that you could split them up into different groups. And then, when we went out on tour and they [the record companies] would see us all up there together - we had five, six guitars playing at one time, not including the bass! -, they said: "Wait a minute, that's just one whole group, selling different names!" But it wasn't - we had enough people in the group that each member would have a section to be another group. So now we're finally starting to get them to understand that.
You run into people who want to write poetry who don't want to read anything in the tradition. That's like wanting to be a builder but not finding out what different kinds of wood you use.
Three-fourths of philosophy and literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering.
(Resort) players are finding that bunker. I can tell; they don't rake the sand.
That's the part most of us can remember being part of homeroom,
My Grandmother standing wordless fifteen minutes Between rows of loganberries, clippers poised in her hand.
Grandfather Space. The Mind is his Wife
In the 40,000 year time scale we're all the same people. We're all equally primitive, give or take two or three thousand years here or a hundred years there.
I recalled when I worked in the woods and the bars of Madras, Oregon. That short-haired joy and roughness America your stupidity. I could almost love you again.
Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility.
Will be but corpses dressed in frocks, who cannot speak to birds or rocks.
I don't know of any other city where you can walk through so many culturally diverse neighborhoods, and you're never out of sight of the wild hills. Nature is very close here.
The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void.