Skip to main content

The Practice of the Wild

By
from Whispered Lineage
It was nice to read that Gary Snyder is still alive and well in American Smoke.  Ian Sinclair tracked him down at his 100-acre woods in Northern California, Kitkitdizze, which he originally bought with Alan Ginsberg and Dick Baker.  The name was derived from the Miwok word for bear clover, found in abundance in that part of the woods.  The retreat serves as a sanctuary for writers, poets, naturalists and other sympathetic souls who share Snyder's love for nature.

He never really considered himself one of the beats, even if Kerouac immortalized him as Japhy Ryder in The Dharma Bums.  Snyder considers this a piece of "fabulilsm" as the climb up the "Matterhorn" was real but Kerouac turned into something larger than it actually was.  It is probably my favorite of Kerouac's books, beginning in the foothills behind Berkley, where Snyder was teaching at the time, and extending inland to the higher peaks.



He was also great friends with Ginsberg but their poetry seemed to reach at opposite ends of the spectrum.  They purchased the property together back in the 60s, after Snyder had returned from Japan in the engine room of an oil tanker.  The wooded site became their sanctuary.

Sinclair mentions a documentary, Practice of the Wild, which was done in 2010.  Snyder is interviewed by Jim Harrison, also known for his rugged outdoor approach to life, personified in his books Sundog and Wolf.  Harrison is also known for his poetry.  The title comes from a collection of essays Snyder published that year.

Snyder received the Pulitzer prize for his collection of poems, Turtle Island, published in 1975, which begins with a piece on the Anasazi, or ancient ones, who inhabited the Four Corners Region of the Southwest.  He branches out from this starting point to take in a broad range of impressions.  I particularly like "The Bath," which he describes he and his wife giving their son Kai a bath in a sauna.

Really have been enjoying American Smoke as Ian Sinclair gives marvelous insights into a wide range of poets and writers who traversed the American continent, picking up their trails at various points.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

O Pioneers!

By
It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer.  Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions.  I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters.  Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs.  Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77.  I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not.  Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi
12 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Colonel

By
Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud.  -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!
240 comments
Read more