What struck me the most about Snyder was his presence in one place, his devotion to one place. Whether it's the early rough Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, mid-career "The Bath," or recent work "Danger on Peaks," I can always feel that he's there; he's made a home in poetry, and also in nature, or perhaps the nature in poetry.
Take "Riprap" for instance, the vivid Seattle work strike highlights a "solitary" man standing in line. Thought he's not physically alone, standing with other men, he actually is alone, or lonely. We're given a background picture of the cliffs, mountains, cloud, and something of Desolate. The landscape mirrors that of the man's inner psyche. In effect, he is in the land, of the land, a continuity of the land. This is powerfully experiential. What I want to say is that Snyder is not off somewhere in an office with desk, paper, and pen, detached from the scene while composing some "poetic" lines to describe the place. He is in the place. The soul within communes with that landscape of harshness and immutability.
Speaking of communing, even in translated poems as the case of Cold Mountain, one gets the sense that Snyder almost knew that crazy old man. One poet and another poet. One's life overlapping in another's. Cold Mountain's legacy influenced Snyder, who in turn chronicles or continues, with revisions, the ancient writer's vision. He's not methodologically analyzing the religious and social implications of a vagabond, or even the literary merits of those near-mad scribbles on the wall now usually referred to as graffiti in contemporary government's eye. Beyond the mere political or didactic, Snyder is reaching for something more organic, perhaps more true.
I really do appreciate his rendering in "The Bath" of the physical body as intertwined with the metaphysical reality. This world is, in essence, a fusion of both. The ember lamp-light, the name Masa, the water--all carry significance almost mystically. What I wonder, in reading his biography, regards to the element of eternity in Snyder's poems. Masa and the little boy, clearly beloved, are featured in this celebrated moment in which time almost stops itself. However, Snyder has had many marriages. To get to Masa, he moved on from a woman, and from Masa, he would move on to another woman. If influenced by Zen thought, of transience, how could Snyder approach the idea of fidelity? Can nothing last forever?
Clearly in his later poetry collection Danger on Peaks Snyder has reached a certain lucidity that nears timelessness. In the poem about his mother-in-law, Jean is unaffected by age, or time, continuing to savor the coffee and watch cherry blossoms. I would venture to say that it is not clear where the location of the cherry blossoms are, whether tangibly before her eyes or in the imagination from memories of Japan. It is not important. Either way, distance exists. But a poem is not affected by these things: distance, time. While the Riprap poems depict segments, separate incidents or views as the title denotes, and reflective of Snyder's own wandering life, traveling from one occupation (lumber-worker) to another (seaman); Danger on Peak seems to have unified the "peaks" into a larger adventure, or ceased the disparate experiences in exchange of a experience.
Take "Riprap" for instance, the vivid Seattle work strike highlights a "solitary" man standing in line. Thought he's not physically alone, standing with other men, he actually is alone, or lonely. We're given a background picture of the cliffs, mountains, cloud, and something of Desolate. The landscape mirrors that of the man's inner psyche. In effect, he is in the land, of the land, a continuity of the land. This is powerfully experiential. What I want to say is that Snyder is not off somewhere in an office with desk, paper, and pen, detached from the scene while composing some "poetic" lines to describe the place. He is in the place. The soul within communes with that landscape of harshness and immutability.
Speaking of communing, even in translated poems as the case of Cold Mountain, one gets the sense that Snyder almost knew that crazy old man. One poet and another poet. One's life overlapping in another's. Cold Mountain's legacy influenced Snyder, who in turn chronicles or continues, with revisions, the ancient writer's vision. He's not methodologically analyzing the religious and social implications of a vagabond, or even the literary merits of those near-mad scribbles on the wall now usually referred to as graffiti in contemporary government's eye. Beyond the mere political or didactic, Snyder is reaching for something more organic, perhaps more true.
I really do appreciate his rendering in "The Bath" of the physical body as intertwined with the metaphysical reality. This world is, in essence, a fusion of both. The ember lamp-light, the name Masa, the water--all carry significance almost mystically. What I wonder, in reading his biography, regards to the element of eternity in Snyder's poems. Masa and the little boy, clearly beloved, are featured in this celebrated moment in which time almost stops itself. However, Snyder has had many marriages. To get to Masa, he moved on from a woman, and from Masa, he would move on to another woman. If influenced by Zen thought, of transience, how could Snyder approach the idea of fidelity? Can nothing last forever?
Clearly in his later poetry collection Danger on Peaks Snyder has reached a certain lucidity that nears timelessness. In the poem about his mother-in-law, Jean is unaffected by age, or time, continuing to savor the coffee and watch cherry blossoms. I would venture to say that it is not clear where the location of the cherry blossoms are, whether tangibly before her eyes or in the imagination from memories of Japan. It is not important. Either way, distance exists. But a poem is not affected by these things: distance, time. While the Riprap poems depict segments, separate incidents or views as the title denotes, and reflective of Snyder's own wandering life, traveling from one occupation (lumber-worker) to another (seaman); Danger on Peak seems to have unified the "peaks" into a larger adventure, or ceased the disparate experiences in exchange of a experience.
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