Collected Poems by Gary Snyder, Library of America

 

A deep dive

 In being honoured by a mighty Library of America tome, Snyder finally takes his place on the bookshelf next to the great men and women of letters of the Twentieth Century. The credit for this collection goes to his longtime collaborator Jack Shoemaker of Counterpoint; and to Anthony Hunt, who recently (that is, since the turn of the century) wrote a lengthy study of Gary’s magnum opus, Mountains and Rivers Without End.

Students of Snyder will already be familiar with his eleven mainstream works, all here. What is interesting is the work that has gone into assembling all the fragments, drafts and uncollected pieces that I am sure even Gary himself may have lost track of in the long span of his writing. These curiosities are testament to Snyder’s generosity in proving content for magazines and handmade publications from the sixties onward.

The earliest of these come from Gary’s time at Reed college, and as he was only twenty-one years old at the time, might be considered juvenilia. He has made it clear in interviews in the past that he burned most of his writing from this time, so to get a peek at what he decided to save reveals his early path. The notes on the early poems help understanding and add depth to them. For example, ‘Escaping Cambridge’, which he wrote about mountaineer George Leigh Mallory, seems familiar, and is cross-referenced with a more recent version that appeared in ‘Left Out in the Rain’.  The later version has less of the poetic whimsy that flavoured the 1951 version.

Also worth a close look is ‘Hymn to the Goddess San Francisco in Paradise’. It was written in 1965, and is the poem closest in style to Ginsberg from the same era. Strange to read Gary using the expletives that to Ginsberg cam so naturally. Many poems collected from the mid to late sixties show how much Snyder took in on his Indian travels of 1962. Shoemaker’s notes are very helpful if you’re not up to speed on your Indian deities. The mid to late sixties were also the time when Gary was most forthright politically, engaged as he was with opposition to the Vietnam War and complaining to successive Presidents.

Gary’s longevity is a joy, and to read poetry from a span of seventy years is a fascinating exercise. However, with the passing of the years comes the sadness that he has outlived nearly all his contemporaries. There are tributes, eulogies, little poems saying goodbye to Lew Welch, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg and others. The most brutal and challenging is ‘Go Now’, in which he wrote about the death of his wife Carole Koda. It pulls no punches. It’s typical of him as a writer, and something he has done his whole life – he tells the truth.

The Youngsteiger has now become the great old wise sage of the American West. It has been such a life so far; so full of travel, people and rich in exploration. A brief time with this book reveals the great scope of his experience. There is hardly a corner of the world he has not seen, hardly a wilderness that he has delved deeply into. If he never writes another line, he will have done enough.