Gary Snyder

“I am foremost a poet, doomed to be shamelessly silly, undignified, curious, ****struck, & considering (in the words of Rimbaud) the disorder of my own mind sacred. So I don't think I'll ever commit myself to the roll of Zen monk..." –Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder grew up in California, and attended Reed College. There, he expanded his interests to Buddhism, and Asian languages. Snyder has often been described as “zen”; that is, he was very calm and down to earth.

Ripples On The Surface
By Gary Snyder

"Ripples on the surface of water
were silver salmon passing under—different
from the sorts of ripples caused by breezes"

A scudding plume on the wave—
a humpback whale is
breaking out in air up
gulping herring
—Nature not a book, but a performance, a
high old culture.

Ever-fresh events
scraped out, rubbed out, and used, used, again—
the braided channels of the rivers
hidden under fields of grass—

The vast wild
the house, alone.
the little house in the wild,
the wild in the house.

both forgotten.

No nature.

Both together, one big empty house.

I liked this poem by Snyder. It included nature…but unexpectedly. His descriptions of nation make it seem more profound: I really enjoyed the choices of diction in this poem. The ways Snyder provides so many images that are easily visualized really captivated my attention as I read and reread the poem.

http://www.litkicks.com/Texts/Riprap.html

One sentence that really stood out for me was “The world is like an endless four-dimensional game of Go”. This really struck a chord with me…it made me think. I think Gary Snyder was really ahead of his time. Born in 1930, Snyder began writing in the ‘50’s. That said, his way of thinking, this free-spirited, ever immortal mindset, was about 10-20 years ahead of his time. In the 21st centaury, this line from RipRap still applies. We live in a world that’s always moving…I mean, think about it: people are ridiculed in advertisements for using CASH to pay for items. God forbid we bring back cash, when plastic is so much faster. We use vacuum cleaners to clean our houses faster. We have cars to get where we want to go faster. Speed is always a factor. The world really is like a constant game of “Go”. I think Gary Snyder has a really firm grasp on life, and everything there is to know about it.

I really can’t see anything about Gary Snyder’s poetry that makes it distinctly American, other than the “game of go” bit. Snyder clearly recognized the progression the world was going through at the time he wrote RipRap.