No Nature: New and Selected Poems - Softcover

Snyder, Gary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679742522 ISBN 13: 9780679742524

Publisher: Pantheon, 1993

Synopsis

"The greatest of living nature poets. . . . It helps us to go on, having Gary Snyder in our midst."--Los Angeles Times. Snyder is the author of many volumes of poetry and prose, including The Practice of the Wild and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Turtle Island. Reading tour.

About this title

About the Author:

GARY SNYDER is a poet, essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. His accolades include the Pulitzer Prize for poetry (1975), the American Book Award (1984), the Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1997), the John Hay Award for Nature Writing (1997), and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2008). Often associated with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance, he is known as “the Poet Laureate of Deep Ecology,” and his poetry reflects an immersion in both Buddhist spirituality and nature. Snyder has translated literature into English from ancient Chinese and modern Japanese. For many years, Snyder served as a faculty member at the University of California, Davis, and he also served for a time on the California Arts Council.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

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
SURROUNDED BY WILD TURKEYS

Little calls     as they pass
     through dry forbs and grasses
Under blue oak and gray digger pine
In the warm afternoon of the forest-fire haze;

Twenty or more, long-legged birds
     all alike.

So are we, in our soft calling,
     passing on through.

Our young, which trail after,

Look just like us.
THOUGHTS ON LOOKING AT A SAMUEL PALMER ETCHING AT THE TATE

Moonlight landscape, sheep,
     and shepherds watching eerie beauty

The broad sheep backs
     resting bunched up under leafy oaks
     or hid in black moon shadow,

Lives of cows and sheep—
     calf mouth that sucks your finger
     the steer that pokes his head through
     pipe iron gate
     to lick lapel, and lightly
     touch and taste
     the buttons of your coat,

Cows that trail you are as you cross the meadow;
     & silent sheep     slow heads turning
     solemn faces
     hooves fringed in dewy grass.

They stamp and steam in chilly morn
     and gaze at length on clouds and hills

          before they board the truck.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0679742522
• ISBN 13: 9780679742524
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416