A deep
dive
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.
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