Terra Firma The Poetics Of Gary Snyder

The last warm spells of late autumn bring the bees out for further final flights. Spirits tempered with the certainty of frost and darkened days, they go about their insect business nonetheless. Hymenoptera: allergy makes their venom serious poison to my blood. Homeopathy prescribes apis which I dutifully ingest. Sit stUl to reflect on messages left forever in the honeycombed matrix of heart and mind. This planet's made of clues and cryptic music; the strata in the agates of the lake, and momentary glimpses of insights taking more than half a lifetime to sink in. Twenty-five years ago, we paid seventy five cents to see grainy black and white Frenen films on campus: Godard, Truffaut, Tati, Cocteau. The washroom down the hall from the old Architecture and Design Auditorium was gloriously unreno vated (the pisser of today a miserable heil by comparison). And there, above a time-worn urinal, scrawled in black crayon, this message: VTRGIL'S GE ORGIC IV. I see it even now in the movie house of my skull, as I hold a 1920 Oxford editionofVirgil(threebucksatWestSideBooks), smaller than my hand. The fourth Georgic deals at length with Bees, and how to respect them. It's good to be alive. The naming of living things (this does include the living rocks, sentient minerals, and all elemental forces) is a tradition - tangible, visible even, in the glowing wheel of writers all connected by their visión. Marianne Moore with her Arctic Ox or Goot. William Carlos Williams, birthing consi ltant, dear enough to invoke the liliaceous asphodel. And the subsequent generation, so helpful to mine own: Jack Kerouac, whose spiritinariablyaccompanieseveryfreight train heard at idght; Allen Ginsberg, whose Fall of America keot me company during those long lysergic winebottle wanderings, teenaged insomnia needing a City Lights edition to squeeze in rainsoaked fingers. Diane Di Prima, whose wisdom and sensitivity to light and shadow have taught me to be quiet, study Keats, and work to clarify the sodal stream; poetic schematic of responsible etlücs. And here, sprouted from the same stem as Diane's pomegranate, consider the tripartite leaf of this gorgeoi s family tree: Philip Whalen, Lew Welch and Giry Snyder. "The many-headed serpent is the Tao. " Who said that? Now, the voice of Marianne Moore, her most memorable prayer omitted from the Norton Anthology: ... O to be a dragon, a symbol of the power of Heaven - ofsilkworm size or Imn ense; at times invisible. One is nevur alone. When I read Diane Di Prima I'm washing her dishes so she can sit at table to maybe pen another Loba letter. When I read Lew Welch I' m kneeling with him on the forest floor watching a brillian orange slug "nibbling at the leaves of trill'um." Philip Whalen somehow brings the menory of tortoises we saw in the New Orleans Zoo - ancient jaws munching vegetables as slow as could be. Whalen reminds me silently ho'v I eat way way way too f ast: "In order to be calm and mellow, one must take time to find out whdt it is and practice it." Gary Snydc.r advises us to learn the names of flowers and mi shrooms, learn the trees, as Virgil recommends a thorough comprehension of the night-time sky . Gary says: "The power that gi ves us good land is none other than Gaia herself, the whole network." And: the land belongs to ltsetf 'no self in self; no self In things. ' It's really about seeing. May I suggest a lesson? A small book of abou t fif ty pages. "Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei: How a Chinese poem is translated" (Eliot Weinberger, Octavio Paz, 1987: Moyer Bell Unlimited). This is an exercise in visioning. Permutations from tongue to tongue, in written strokes. The original poem, 1200 years old, from the Tang Dynasty, consists of twenty two characters which describe mountains, sunlight, echoes and moss (not exactly in that order). Kenneth Rexroth's interpretation is delightful. Octavio Paz's, ruminative. With each version, the poem changos shape, form, blood type. The nineteenth translation is by Gary Snyder. The commentary reads: "Surely one of the best translations, partially because of Snyder's lifelong forest experience. Like Rexroth, he can see the scène. Every word of Wang has been translated, and nothing added, yet the translation exists as an American poem." Another reason Snyder did so well with this work is his lifelong involvement with Asian cultures and spirituality. To sit still and empty the mind of vexations. Drink in the moment, and take your geologie time. Look to attain a place "Where love and wisdom are the same. " Look carefully where you step: Artemis naked: the soft white buried sprout of the worid's fírst atad. To see it that closely one would need to crawl. Check this: "A Place In Space: Ethics, Aesthetics and Watersheds" (1996 Counterpoint Books). Great tales of crawling on the ground. Wearing leather gloves, hats, jackets, tough pants, Snyder and friends abandon the trails for the undergrowth, where animáis make their own trails and only a crawler may proceed! To love the earth enough this way they put their hands and knees against the sticks and lea ves and snow and . . . bear tracks! A willingness to put your nose to the ground, look closely, this is home. When William Carlos Williams put a substrata drilling chart in his Paterson it was to tease Ezra Pound about ancient fossil texts, but still, the only context on this earth is the context of Mother Earth. You are here. "Mountains and Rivers Without End" is an extended poetry project begun in 1956 and just recently declared complete (1996, Counterpoint Books). From the flyleaf: "Initially inspired by East Asían landscape painting and nis own experience within 'a chaotic universe where everything is in place,' Snyder's visión was further stimulated by Asian art and drama, Gaia history, Native American performance and storytelling, the practice of Zen Buddhism, and the varied landscapes of Japan, California, Alaska, Australia, China, and Taiwan." Snyder's explanation of the making of this serial work, located at the back of the book, is strong tea all by itself. The thirty-nine poems within constitute a detailed spectrum of impressions from a lifetime of wanderings and ponderings. My personal favorite, or the one which meant so much to me I want to learn it by heart and carry it with me for the rest of my days, iscalled"EarringsDanglingandMilesofDesert." Here we meet the Sagebrush (Artemisia) and her family which comprises "one of the largest plant communities in North America." Sing, children: Sagebrush, Wormwood,Mugwort, Artewis. "She loves to hunt In the shadows of mountains and In the wind"- Artem in Greek meant to dangle" or "eaning." (Well-connected, "articúlate," art....) These understandings come of patience and hard work. A methodology which any working poet will recognize; the honest laboring Muse: The mythms ofmy poems follow the rtiythm of physical work l'm dolng and life l'm leadlng at any given Urne- which makes the muslc in my head which makes the line. The value and functton of poetry can be said In very few words. One side of it Is in-time, the other Is out-of-time. The In-time side oflt is to tune us in to mother nature and human nature so that we live in -time, in oursocieties in a way and on a path in which all things can come to fruition equally, and together in hannony. A path of beauty. And the out-of-time functlon of poetry Is to return us to our own true original nature at this Instant forever. And those two things happen, sometí mes together, sometimos not, here and there and all over the wortd, and always have. Actually poetry In a healthy, stable society (in which poets are not torced willy-nllly to all be revolutionaries) does Influence the behavlor of lovers, and It does make one thlnk of one's parents, and put import anee on friondshlp, and give meanlng to history and culture, and improve public manners . . . yes, poetry shoukJ do that. (from "Gary Snyder's Vision: Poetry and the Real Work" by Charles Molesworth (1983 University of Missouri Press). In 1990, North Point Press published 'The Practice of the Wild," a book of essays by Gary Snyder. As of 1995 it was in its seventh printing. If any one text (apart from the poetry itself) will give a good insight and help to reach a better understanding of this man's ecologicalsocio-politicalspiritual philosophy, this is it right here. Throughout the book, Snyder lovingly examines planet Earth, her denizens, the humans and their languages. Among the last entries is this message: Our Immedlate business, and our quarrel, Is with ourselves. It would be presumptuous to think that Gaia much needs our prayers or healing vlbes. Human beings themselves are at risk- not just on some survlval-of-clvilizaOon level but more baslcally on the level of heart and soul. We are in danger of losing our souls. We are Ignorant of our own nature and confused about what It means tobe a human belng. Leaf back to an apparition poem written in the early 1970s, from the collection "Axe Handles" - Lew Welch appears to Gary, seemingly alive. Snyder says: "you didn't shoot yourselfqfterall. "Lewreplies, "Yesldid"but then quickly gets down to business: "What I carne to say was, teach the chlldren about the cyces. The life cycles. All the other cycles. That's what It's all about, and It's all forgot. "