On The 60th Anniversary Of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road"(2017)-Poets’ Corner- The Zen Of The “Beats”- The Poetry Of Gary Snyder
http://www.english.illinois.edu/Maps/poets/s_z/snyder/life.htm
Click on the title to link to an "American Modern Poetry" entry for the "beat" poet, Gary Snyder.
Book Review
Riprap And Cold Mountain Poems, Gary Snyder, Counterpoint, 2009
As circumstances would have it I recently have been going through a reading, or in most cases a re-reading, of many of the classics of the 1950's "beat" literary scene as a result of getting caught up in marking the 40th anniversary of the death of Jack Kerouac. Thus, I have re-read Kerouac's classic "On The Road", Allen Ginsberg's great modernist poem, "Howl", and the madman of them all, William Burroughs' "Naked Lunch". And along the way, after a 40 year hiatus, Kerouac's "Dharma Bums".
That is where the connection to this recent release of poetry by one of the key West Coast figures in the "beat' movement, Gary Snyder, an early American devotee to Zen Buddhism comes in full force. "Dharma Bums" is a novelistic treatment of Jack Kerouac's bout with Zen enlightenment, with Buddha and with his own inner demons. And central to guiding old Jack through the Zen experience was the aficionado, Gary Snyder, posing under the name Japhy Ryder. I noted in a review of that novel that while I could appreciate the struggle to find one's inner self that dominated that novel I was more in tune with Dean Moriarty's more adrenaline- formed material world adventure quest than Ryder's.
This characterization, however, never encapsulated Gary Snyder's poetry that, while not as to my liking as Allen Ginsberg's rants against the post-industrial world , nevertheless was superior to his when comparisons between their poetic understanding of Buddhism were in play. Snyder was, and I presume off of the reading here still is, serious about the Zen of existence. Ginsberg was all over the place, and I think what really influenced him came from the cabalistic tradition in Jewish life, despite his very OM-saturated period in the 1960s. Read the "Han Shan" poems in this collection first, and then Snyder's and you will see what I mean.
Four Poems for Robin
by Gary Snyder
Siwashing It Out Once in Suislaw Forest
I slept under rhododendron
All night blossoms fell
Shivering on a sheet of cardboard
Feet stuck in my pack
Hands deep in my pockets
Barely able to sleep.
I remembered when we were in school
Sleeping together in a big warm bed
We were the youngest lovers
When we broke up we were still nineteen
Now our friends are married
You teach school back east
I dont mind living this way
Green hills the long blue beach
But sometimes sleeping in the open
I think back when I had you.
A Spring Night in Shokoku-ji
Eight years ago this May
We walked under cherry blossoms
At night in an orchard in Oregon.
All that I wanted then
Is forgotten now, but you.
Here in the night
In a garden of the old capital
I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao
I remember your cool body
Naked under a summer cotton dress.
An Autumn Morning in Shokoku-ji
Last night watching the Pleiades,
Breath smoking in the moonlight,
Bitter memory like vomit
Choked my throat.
I unrolled a sleeping bag
On mats on the porch
Under thick autumn stars.
In dream you appeared
(Three times in nine years)
Wild, cold, and accusing.
I woke shamed and angry:
The pointless wars of the heart.
Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter.
The first time I have
Ever seen them close.
December at Yase
You said, that October,
In the tall dry grass by the orchard
When you chose to be free,
"Again someday, maybe ten years."
After college I saw you
One time. You were strange.
And I was obsessed with a plan.
Now ten years and more have
Gone by: I've always known
where you were--
I might have gone to you
Hoping to win your love back.
You still are single.
I didn't.
I thought I must make it alone. I
Have done that.
Only in dream, like this dawn,
Does the grave, awed intensity
Of our young love
Return to my mind, to my flesh.
We had what the others
All crave and seek for;
We left it behind at nineteen.
I feel ancient, as though I had
Lived many lives.
And may never now know
If I am a fool
Or have done what my
karma demands.
Hay for the Horses
by Gary Snyder
He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
---The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds---
"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."
http://www.english.illinois.edu/Maps/poets/s_z/snyder/life.htm
Click on the title to link to an "American Modern Poetry" entry for the "beat" poet, Gary Snyder.
Book Review
Riprap And Cold Mountain Poems, Gary Snyder, Counterpoint, 2009
As circumstances would have it I recently have been going through a reading, or in most cases a re-reading, of many of the classics of the 1950's "beat" literary scene as a result of getting caught up in marking the 40th anniversary of the death of Jack Kerouac. Thus, I have re-read Kerouac's classic "On The Road", Allen Ginsberg's great modernist poem, "Howl", and the madman of them all, William Burroughs' "Naked Lunch". And along the way, after a 40 year hiatus, Kerouac's "Dharma Bums".
That is where the connection to this recent release of poetry by one of the key West Coast figures in the "beat' movement, Gary Snyder, an early American devotee to Zen Buddhism comes in full force. "Dharma Bums" is a novelistic treatment of Jack Kerouac's bout with Zen enlightenment, with Buddha and with his own inner demons. And central to guiding old Jack through the Zen experience was the aficionado, Gary Snyder, posing under the name Japhy Ryder. I noted in a review of that novel that while I could appreciate the struggle to find one's inner self that dominated that novel I was more in tune with Dean Moriarty's more adrenaline- formed material world adventure quest than Ryder's.
This characterization, however, never encapsulated Gary Snyder's poetry that, while not as to my liking as Allen Ginsberg's rants against the post-industrial world , nevertheless was superior to his when comparisons between their poetic understanding of Buddhism were in play. Snyder was, and I presume off of the reading here still is, serious about the Zen of existence. Ginsberg was all over the place, and I think what really influenced him came from the cabalistic tradition in Jewish life, despite his very OM-saturated period in the 1960s. Read the "Han Shan" poems in this collection first, and then Snyder's and you will see what I mean.
Four Poems for Robin
by Gary Snyder
Siwashing It Out Once in Suislaw Forest
I slept under rhododendron
All night blossoms fell
Shivering on a sheet of cardboard
Feet stuck in my pack
Hands deep in my pockets
Barely able to sleep.
I remembered when we were in school
Sleeping together in a big warm bed
We were the youngest lovers
When we broke up we were still nineteen
Now our friends are married
You teach school back east
I dont mind living this way
Green hills the long blue beach
But sometimes sleeping in the open
I think back when I had you.
A Spring Night in Shokoku-ji
Eight years ago this May
We walked under cherry blossoms
At night in an orchard in Oregon.
All that I wanted then
Is forgotten now, but you.
Here in the night
In a garden of the old capital
I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao
I remember your cool body
Naked under a summer cotton dress.
An Autumn Morning in Shokoku-ji
Last night watching the Pleiades,
Breath smoking in the moonlight,
Bitter memory like vomit
Choked my throat.
I unrolled a sleeping bag
On mats on the porch
Under thick autumn stars.
In dream you appeared
(Three times in nine years)
Wild, cold, and accusing.
I woke shamed and angry:
The pointless wars of the heart.
Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter.
The first time I have
Ever seen them close.
December at Yase
You said, that October,
In the tall dry grass by the orchard
When you chose to be free,
"Again someday, maybe ten years."
After college I saw you
One time. You were strange.
And I was obsessed with a plan.
Now ten years and more have
Gone by: I've always known
where you were--
I might have gone to you
Hoping to win your love back.
You still are single.
I didn't.
I thought I must make it alone. I
Have done that.
Only in dream, like this dawn,
Does the grave, awed intensity
Of our young love
Return to my mind, to my flesh.
We had what the others
All crave and seek for;
We left it behind at nineteen.
I feel ancient, as though I had
Lived many lives.
And may never now know
If I am a fool
Or have done what my
karma demands.
Hay for the Horses
by Gary Snyder
He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
---The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds---
"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."
No comments:
Post a Comment