BOOK REVIEW: Gary Snyder Reader

GARY SNYDER FIRST CAME to prominence in the 1950s as part of the Beat movement (he was the model for one of the characters in Jack Kerouac's "Dharma Bums" and a close friend of Allen Ginsberg's), but his life and work cannot be reduced to any association with that or any other movement.

Rather, Snyder is more of a contemporary Thoreau, a truly visionary, yet staunchly pragmatic artist and thinker who, though often at odds with society, continues to work for a better world as well as personal enlightenment.

Snyder was reared on a small family farm in the Pacific Northwest. We learn from his many reflections included in "The Gary Snyder Reader" that he began sleeping outside and communing with nature when a young child. His passionate devotion to the outdoors led to work in the logging industry and the park service. His earliest published poems are highly compressed, but philosophically expansive meditations on solitude and nature:

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.

(from Mid-August at
Sourdough Mt. Lookout")

AFTER WORKING IN the Northwest for much of his 20s, Snyder became interested in Buddhism. No armchair philosopher, he put himself through a rigorous course of study at U.C. Berkeley in preparation for his first trip to Japan, learning and translating East Asian languages. He spent many years studying at a monastery in Kyoto, Japan, and traveling through China and India. Included in the Reader are generous selections from his travel journals and interviews, in which he articulates his Buddhist views. Particularly moving is Snyder's account of how Zen helped him come to terms with his own freedom, and the responsibility that comes with it:

My own personal discovery in the Zen monastery in Kyoto was that even with the extraordinary uniformity of behavior, practice, dress, gesture, every movement from dawn till dark, in a Zen monastery everybody was really quite different. ... The dialectic of Rinzai Zen practice is that you live a totally ruled life, but when you go into the sanzen room, you have absolute freedom. The roshi wouldn't say this, but if you forced him, he might say, "You think your life is too rigid? You have complete freedom here. Express yourself. What have you got to show me? Show me your freedom!" This really puts you on the line---"Okay, I've got my freedom; what do I want to do with it?" That's part of how koan practice works.

AFTER A LONG STAY IN THE EAST , Snyder settled in rural northern California, where he continues to live and write. Never the stereotypical poet in the ivory tower, Snyder is in his own words "a good administrator," who participates in local government. As one might suspect, Snyder is a passionate advocate of environmental and bioregional issues, but he also shares his learned, articulate views on school boards and building codes.

Snyder's life and work speak for passionate, intense involvement with the world. One of his many strengths is his pragmatic balance of meditation and work. When asked why he does not "sit" all day like many Buddhists, he replies, "because there's too much work to be done. Somebody's got to grow the tomatoes."

Reading Snyder in large quantities, one comes away in awe of both the breadth and concentration of his sensibility. Many great poets teach us the beauty of language or the heights of passion; Snyder is one of the few who teaches us how to live better lives.

What is even more remarkable is how Snyder remains humble and likable despite his vast reservoir of talent and knowledge. At his frequent best, he reminds us that his own life is as full of mystery and doubt as any other:

Michael Shannon Friedman teaches English at West Virginia University at Parkersburg. He is a freelance writer and singer-songwriter with an album of his tunes out called "Stories I Have Stolen" on Perdition Records. Reach him through Hundred Mountain.