“As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth . . . the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and the wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.”
― Gary Snyder
After Work
The shack and a few trees float in the blowing fog I pull out your blouse, warm my cold hands on your breasts. you laugh and shudder peeling garlic by the hot iron stove. bring in the axe, the rake, the wood we'll lean on the wall against each other stew simmering on the fire as it grows dark drinking wine.
Civilization
Those are the people who do complicated things. they'll grab us by the thousands and put us to work. World's going to hell, with all these villages and trails. Wild duck flocks aren't what they used to be. Aurochs grow rare. Fetch me my feathers and amber * A small cricket on the typescript page of "Kyoto born in spring song" grooms himself in time with The Well-Tempered Clavier. I quit typing and watch him through a glass. How well articulated! How neat! Nobody understands the ANIMAL KINGDOM. * When creeks are full The poems flow When creeks are down We heap stones.
How Poetry Comes To Me
It comes blundering over the Boulders at night, it stays Frightened outside the Range of my campfire I go to meet it at the Edge of the light
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Finding magic and meaning in the mundane.
I have always considered Gary Snyder to be the best of the Beat poets because his poems are well-crafted and focus, as he said himself, "on the true nature of things" that truly matter.
The second stanza of the first poem, "After Work" is a particularly beautiful depiction of ordinary, domestic daily life and love:
"we'll lean on the wall
against each other
stew simmering on the fire
as it grows dark
drinking wine."
Does anyone know if he is still alive? The last I heard of him, he was somewhere in Sierra Nevada.