gary snyder (1930- ). “i try to hold both history and wildness in my mind, that my poems may...
TRANSCRIPT
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Gary Snyder (1930- )
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Gary Snyder (1930- )
“I try to hold both history and wildness in my mind, that my poems may approa
ch the true measure of things.”
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His quest of the balance (between Nature and Culture)
has led him to…• 1. The natural world (Nature
Writing)• 2. The study of mythology • 3. Eastern religions• 4. Oral traditions The most archaic values on
earth.
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Snyder’s Poetry
Poetry as recovery and healing. (like the shaman-poet of primitive cultures
From Poetry and the Primitive)
• His poems are acts of cultural criticism, challenges to the dominant values of the contemporary world.
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Literary Life
• In 1947, he entered Reed College, where he studied anthropology and was interested in Native American cultures. (published Myth and Texts in 1960s)
• 1950s: San Francisco Renaissance. With Allen Ginsberg
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Literary Life II
• Also study classical Chinese at Berkeley and translated some of the Cold Mountains Poems
• Mid 1950s to 1968 lived in Japan: learned Buddhism under Zen masters (poetic vision in The Blue Sky)
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• Worked as a timber scaler, a forest fire lookout, a logger
• “My poem follow the rhythms of the physical work I’m doing and the life I’m reading at any given time”
• Riprap (a forester’s term)
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• Snyder’s poem often fllow a trail of ascent or descent, as in Stright-Creek—Great Burn (from Turtle Island, 1975)
• Hiking with friends, he experiences the world as dynamic and flowing (running water and “changing clouds”)
• But the journey brings the walker to a still point
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• The achievement of stillness in a universe of change is pivotal.
• The mind empties itself, the individual ego is erased, and the local place reveals the universal.
• A Zen-like stillness and also an appealing energy (source: love of wildness and celebration of Eros)
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A Walk
• Sunday the only day we don't work:• Mules farting around the meadow,
• Murphy fishing,• The tent flaps in the warm• Early sun: I've eaten breakfast and I'll
• Take a walk • To Benson Lake. Packed a lunch,• Goodbye. Hopping on creekbed boulders• Up the rock throat three miles P
uite Creek --
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P2
• In steep gorge glacier-slick rattlesnake country• Jump, land by a pool, trout skitter,The clear sky.
Deer tracks.• Bad place by a falls, boulders big as houses,• Lunch tied to belt,• I stemmed up a crack and almost fell• But rolled out safe on a ledge
and ambled on.
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Related Links
• http://virtualguidebooks.com/CentralCalif/Yosemite/NorthernYosemite/BensonBeachMorning.html
• http://some-landscapes.blogspot.com/2006/02/piute-creek.html
• comment
• http://mail.sju.edu.tw/cocomo/
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P3
• Quail chicks freeze underfoot, color of stone• Then run cheep! away, hen quail fussing.• Craggy west end of Benson Lake -- after ed
ging Past dark creek pools on a long white slope –
• Lookt down in the ice-black lake
• lined with cliff• From far above: deep shimmering trout.
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P4
• A lone duck in a gunsightpass
• steep side hill• Through slide-aspen and talus, to the east end,• Down to grass, wading a wide smooth stream• Into camp. At last. • By the rusty three-year-• Ago left-behind cookstove• Of the old trail crew,• Stoppt and swam and ate my lunch.
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Big Tooth Aspen
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Aspen 北美齒楊
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Aspen Closeup
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Piute Creek