April - National Poetry Month - Gary Snyder

 As we celebrate National Poetry Month and approach Earth Day on April 22, here are some videos and other works from the environmental poet and philosopher - Gary Snyder . This first video was recorded  on March 5, 2009 as part of the Lunch Poems program at U.C. Berkeley -  http://lunchpoems.berkeley.edu/ .  

"Born in San Francisco in 1930, world-renowned poet, essayist, and environmentalist Gary Snyder has published sixteen books of poetry and prose, and received the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 for Turtle Island. Snyder has traveled widely and lived for extended periods of time in Japan, where he studied and practiced Rinzai Zen. He is currently a professor at University of California, Davis."




Northwest Stories: Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder at D.G. Wills Books, 1992
Gary Snyder on Ecology and Poetry
Gary Snyder on Ecology and Poetry - part 4
Gary Snyder 17th Prague Writers' festival 2007
After Nature (audio)

Riprap
by Gary Snyder

"Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
               placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
               in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
               riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
               straying planets,
These poems, people,
               lost ponies with
Dragging saddles—
               and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
               four-dimensional
Game of Go.
              ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
              a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
              with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
             all change, in thoughts,
As well as things."