Gary Snyder at 95

Gary Snyder, turns 95 today – a “living legend”.

In celebration of the occasion, Library of America is issuing the companion volume to 2022’s Collected Poems, Essential Prose, edited, as with the previous volume, by Jack Shoemaker and with an introduction by Kim Stanley Robinson

“This volume”, the publishers write,  “gathers the essential prose writings of our “poet laureate of Deep Ecology,” spanning the entire arc of his seventy-year career and sounding his deepest themes –  How can we learn to tread lightly on the land we inhabit? What can ancient faiths and traditions teach us about living creatively and in community in the here and now?..”

The book begins with “essays, memoirs, and poetic notebooks from Snyder’s landmark first prose collection, Earth House Hold – Technical Notes & Queries to Fellow Dharma Revolutionaries (1969). In “Lookout’s Journal,” he describes his life as a young fire spotter in the mountains of Washington State, and his emerging sense of vocation as a poet; in “Spring Sesshin at Shokoku-ji” and “Suwa-no-se Island and the Banyan Ashram,” he recounts his experiences as an initiate in a Kyoto monastery and in communal living on a remote island in the Ryukyus; and in “Buddhism and the Coming Revolu­tion,” he foresees the “nation-shaking implications” of personal enlightenment and spiritual discovery.

Selections from He Who Hunted Birds in His Father’s Village: The Dimensions of a Haida Myth (1979) reflect Snyder’s lifelong studies in Native American religions and cultures. His sense of humor and con­versational brilliance shine through in wide-ranging interviews from The Real Work (1980) and elsewhere. In chapters from Passage Through India (1984), his account of a six-month tour through South Asia with his wife Joanne Kyger and his friend Allen Ginsberg, he explores holy sites both ancient and modern, from the temples at Khajuraho to the Dalai Lama’s resi­dence-in-exile at Dharamshala.

In The Practice of the Wild (1990), now considered a classic of American environmental writing in the tra­dition of Walden and A Sand County Almanac, Snyder offers an “exquisite, far-sighted articulation of what freedom, wildness, and grace mean, using the lessons of the planet to teach us how to live,” as Gretel Ehrlich puts it. Essays from A Place in Space (1995) and Back on the Fire (2007) explore biore­gionalism, forestry practices, sustainability, and the ecosystems of the Sierra Nevada, where Snyder has lived since 1970. The Great Clod: Notes and Memoirs on Nature and History in East Asia (2016), included here in its entirety, meditates on the intersections of nature and culture in Asian art, literature, and his­tory over millennia.

O Mother Gaia – The World of Gary Snyder, Colin Still’s documentary, “the first feature-length film documenting the life and work of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet/activist Gary Snyder” premiered this past March (March 9) as part of the San Raphael Film Festival,
to great acclaim.

,See the trailer here:

Here’s Gary Snyder and Wang Ping from back in November of last year (Gary details the story of Kitkidizze):

More Gary Snyder 95 celebration – see Scott Edward Anderson (on his “Smokey the Bear Sutra”) – here  – ah,  Gary’s immortal poems!

Happy Birthday Gary!