Unfortunately, poets are not legislators - unacknowledged or
otherwise - of the human race, or Gary Snyder, who calls the
wilderness his "constituency," would create "a new definition of
democracy that would include the nonhuman. . . . This is what I
think we mean by an ecological conscience." American Indian
pantheism and the nonegoism of Buddhism underlie Snyder's poetry -
values he calls "archaic," "primitive," the ancient roots of human
civilization, and redefines as the alternative to the bankruptcy of
materialistic technological society. Snyder's lifestyle has been
disparaged as Beatnik/hippie/dropout (do we still believe they
don't wash?) and pseudo-mystic, but anyone who follows the
middle-class drum beat needs only a glance at his food or fuel bill
or a whiff of dirty urban air for a reminder that all's not well
with the man-made world. Or for a remembrance of how nice it used
to be, read Gary Snyder's keenly observant poems about logging,
hunting, "burning," camping, and the call of the wild; ridges,
valleys, creeks and falls; manzanita boughs, red-tailed hawks,
curlews, whales, pine needles, Boletus mushrooms, night herons who
"nest in the cypress/ by the San Francisco/stationary boilers/ with
the high smoke stack," and "the Delight/ at the heart of creation."
They're like the water colors hanging on the walls of your country
home, little rough-hewn visions of the living things with whom we
share our planet (the "Turtle Island" of the title). No cosmic
verities or trendy folderol here - just pretty poems shining in
their own light. (Kirkus Reviews)
These Pulitzer Prize-winning poems and essays by the author of No
Nature range from the lucid, lyrical, and mystical to the
political. All, however, share a common vision: a rediscovery of
North America and the ways by which we might become true natives of
the land for the first time.
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