This Present Moment: New Poems

Gary Snyder, what a man. In the fall of 1968 I watched Thurgood Marshall preside over a moot court of law students, heard Alex Haley speak about his time and conversations with Malcolm X and his current project, Roots, but the most powerful presentation I witnessed on campus that freshman fall was a poetry reading and elucidation by Gary Snyder.Though identified as one of the Beats, he didn't speak at all about that time or those people. In hindsight we can see that he influenced the Beat poets and writers more than they him. He introduced Allen Ginsberg, Phillip Whalen and Jack Kerouac to Buddhist thought, sensibilities, and Zen meditation. He got Kerouac and Phillip Whalen jobs as fire lookouts in the Cascades. Now at 83, he is one of the few surviving and other than Laurence Ferlinghetti, may be the longest lived of the Beats.That night in ’68 he read his poems, mostly from his upcoming Turtle Island, for which he would win the Pulitzer Prize. After each poem he spoke of the connections to Buddhism, the earth, Native American symbology and myths. He talked, knowing poetry was his way to link them together. Then he would recite another poem. He was aware of the difficulty of trying to assimilate so many histories, cultures, identities and ideas into a brief spoken format. He tried his best to inform his listeners, that night to his audience, and ever after to the readers of his poems.He tried to explain his melded interests, a sacred earth, our environment, how cultures from ancient Chinese to Native American treated their world, and how to translate it into words. He was living in the eastern Sierras, trying to integrate what he knew with the life he lived and observed. He was sympathetic to the loggers and the back to the land neighbors in his mountains, but did not hesitate to point out anomalies. He said the geodesic domes erected by new age wannabes seemed like “warts on the earth.”Now I occasionally come across one of his poems. It's like running into an old friend. It's hard to remember too many details of my only encounter with him. I admire his passion of exploration. He seems never to have stopped, delving further into environmental care and activism. He has never ignored the world he is part of, still striving to preserve and convey what is important. His unifying vehicle has always been poetry, his sincerity overwhelming. This I recall then, and imagine now.Then I met him at a reading this year. He makes the world a better place.

Some film crew ought to get its ass out to wherever this old bear eat berries and tries to pick some planets on the vine. i have never really read GS before so bought a couple of these hoping they might turn into some kind of talisman. It seemed to work, just holding one ... a couple of haiku-renga-mutants popped into my head that went like this:the buddha's coolintact for a momenti did a backflip ....off themoon untoearth ....lounged arounda day then hitchedbackthose 3 mutants (of whatever) gave me high hopes for the book, thus these five stars. But do sincerely feel Mr. S deserves more press.Also, I wonder if Gary has any kind of similar experience that I do, which is: the more clueless I become how my name evergot onto a book the more poems I seem able to wirte. With that in mind, I am thinking about giving a workshop called: How to Get Angel Dust Shoved Down Your Throat Against Your Will?For therein probably success, and/or at least some resolutions.Daniel Ladinskyinternational bestselling Penguin author, and famous Hafiz guy. Nevertheless, "clueless" really.

This is a fantastic collection of later poems in the life of a great keeper of traditions. There is a settling, a realized acceptance of inevitability that most of us hope to achieve someday in our lives found in these poems. It is said to be his final living book. I do hope not.

More than ever, Gary Snyder speaks from the same pool of experience and perception that myself. When I was a teenager, his poetry was the spiritual/nature dimension in Beat poetry. Then I began more to appreciate the working man dimension of much of his experience, as I more and more saw it in myself. Now it speaks to me of transformation and the tremendous and tiny Zen of things and more common everyday glowing experience.

I have been a fan of Gary Snyder's for almost fifty years. While this book was a bit short on the number of poems, Snyder still delivered poems that evoked the ancient energy of the human being and all the living relatives, real and imagined.

I'm glad to have a new book of Gary's poems. I am thankful for his life, his rootedness, and that he has so simply shared it with us all, over and over again. He stands before us on the page a plain old man, and in this, becomes remarkable. He calls us into our most human selves. Good for you Gary! Thanks for all of it.

His best work since Axe Handles was launched by North Point Press in a bookstore in Berkeley in the 1980s. Snyder's command of writerly 'presence' in poems is fully mature, confident and strong. At the same time, that is balanced by the kind understanding and subtle humour that comes from being humbled year after year by the deep complications of language and poetry.

So Snyder has been a constant voice for as long as I have known there is such a thing as poetry. Is this his best book? No. It is uneven, but it is still a major work because he is so important. His poem for his dead wife is memorial, eulogy, celebration, sadness. Alone it makes this an important book.

Gary Snyder continues to produce GREAT poetry.

Great book

Gritty, salty, moving. This man has been through some living. There's a tough joy that runs through these poems.

Snyder at his best, and most candid for years.