Gary Snyder’s Birthday

May 8, 2023S P

Gary Snyder, March 12, 1991, New York City – photo: Allen Ginsberg, courtesy Stanford University Libraries / Allen Ginsberg Estate

Gary Snyder, the legendary Gary Snyder, is 93 today.  Happy Birthday Gary!

See Anthony Hunt on the Collected Poems

See Shaun T Griffin‘s “Living Under The Stars” – An homage to poet Gary Snyder”

 

See also this note from the (forthcoming)  Book Four of  Randy Roark’s remarkable Poets Apprentice:

“In 1983, Gary Snyder taught a class at the Jack Kerouac School in Boulder. In the last session, someone asked him for advice to young poets. He said the last word is from Lew Welch. “You don’t how it works. You never know how it works. Lots of people try it. Few do it well. Nobody knows why.”
These are my notes to what he said next.  Advice from a Pulitzer-Prizing-winning poet:
Be more deliberate. Get organized.
Trust the process. Then push it a little further.
Develop a sense of knowing when you’re hearing the right voice.
Discriminate between the words that come to you as a poem or as a non-poem. That’s what self-criticism is, and it grows.
Jack Spicer: It’s like listening to an old-style scratchy radio with static and interference but there’s someone in there talking to you and you can barely hear what’s he saying. Recognize the poem, and don’t write down the static.
You can’t wait. Write it down immediately.
Do exercises. It’s not a poem, it’s an exercise. Frees you up. You write a different kind of poem.
Write a lot throw away a lot.

Audio from 1983, Gary at the Jack Kerouac School (Naropa) can be heard here, here, here, here and here

 

A selection of Gary’s poems translated into Chinese by Xi Chuan, Yang Zi, Liu Xiangyang, Ming Di and Wang Ping came out in China earlier this year (Poets and People Press) accompanied by paintings (by Chen You) and photographs, (courtesy of Wang Ping)

Here’s Ping with one of her many delightful filmed interactions with Gary

 

For a gathering of previous postings on Gary on The Allen Ginsberg Project – see here

Here’s Gary on the occasion of his 90th birthday:

May the candles burn bright again this year!   We salute a national treasure!

Gary Snyder, March 11, 1991, NYC –  photo: Allen Ginsberg, courtesy Stanford University Libraries / Allen Ginsberg Estate

2 comments

  2. I’ve come across your books in the oddest places, one had been laid to rest on someone’s lawn many years ago. It was embraced by the roots of a tree, partially saved by its plastic dust cover, pulled upward and facing the sun, hollowed out but not forgotten.

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