A voice in the wilderness - writer Gary Snyder

Progressive, The, Nov, 1995 by Bob Blanchard

A few months later, Snyder read his poem, "The Berry Feast," at a historic poetry reading at San Francisco's Six Gallery. That night his friend Allen Ginsberg gave a public reading of "Howl" for the first time, and the rebellious fervor and rage of the Beat Generation became part of the national psyche. Jack Kerouac, a close friend to both men, was in the audience. His evocation of the evening and his relationship with Snyder became the foundation of the seminal beat novel, The Dharma Bums. Kerouac's enduring characterization of Snyder as a "great new hero of American culture" made Snyder's lifestyle - proto-Beatnik, mountaineer, poet - a lodestar to many in the burgeoning youth culture of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

However, Snyder was soon living in Japan, pursuing a fascination with Asian culture that had taken root when, as a young boy, he stood awestruck in the presence of the great Asian landscape paintings hanging in the Seattle Art Museum. The groundwork for his journey was three years of Oriental language study at the University of California at Berkeley (following his undergraduate work at Reed College, where, as an anthropology and literature major, he had written his thesis on Native American culture).

A key tenet of Buddhism is that nothing in life is more constant than change, and for ten years in Japan, Snyder devoted his life to an intensive Zen Buddhist practice, living off and on in a monastery. He honed his practice of zazen (sitting in meditation up to ten hours a day), lived as a disciple of a Zen master, and steeped himself in rigorous scholarship, translating and studying Japanese texts.

Snyder wrote no poetry for several years and looks back on that time as a liberating experience. "What can be useful about Buddhism," he says, "is it teaches you to be clear and free in the world and also a person who can work clearly and freely on behalf of others. It encourages you not to be a victim or victimized. Buddhist meditation can teach you how to observe your own mind and your own way of being; it teaches you how to look into your consciousness and become aware of what your thoughts are doing, and what impulses or semi-conscious energies are driving you."

Snyder draws a connection between the Buddhist teaching of respect for all life and his political commitment. "Buddhism is one of the few religious and philosophical systems on a world scale that asserts the ethical value of the nonhuman. What Buddhism contributes to environmental politics is a profound spirit of compassion. In the Buddhist view, everything in the world has value, has authenticity. Ultimately, this goes beyond humans and animals and is an attitude of regard toward rocks, plants, clouds. Do you objectify and commodify the world when you look at it? Or do you see it as worthy, as beautiful, as full of its own intrinsic value?"

Zen Buddhism, radical politics, American Indian philosophy, and a deep love of nature coalesce in Snyder's unique poetic voice. What gives his work such unsurpassed force and depth is a rare ability to convey both the emotional aridity of modern civilization and the spiritual and physical pleasures inherent in the ancient rhythms of day-to-day human life. In The Real Work, a collection of interviews and talks covering the period 1964 to 1979, he describes his writing process: "Writing poetry is delicate and unpredictable and requires a continual openness to inner surprises and a willingness to pay attention to very subtle signs. If you don't notice them, you slide over them and miss the point."