The Prose of a Poet
GLASSGOLD, PETER
The Prose of a Poet EARTH HOUSE HOLD By Gary Snyder New Directions. 143 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by PETER GLASSGOLD Many who are familiar with Gary Snyder's carefully constructed poetry may be...
...Its easygoing language points up a surprisingly humorous attitude that seems to underlie the substance of Zen discipline...
...Why Tribe...
...Tanker Notes" (1957-58...
...Japan First Time Around" (1956-57...
...Masa and I spoke...
...Granted—but even in his prose...
...The theme is timely, but rendered a little foolish by Snyder's insistence that the cure for our polluted environment can be found in the "surfacing (in a specifically 'American' incarnation) of the Great Subculture which goes back as far perhaps as the late Paleolithic"—in other words, hippies...
...and "Dharma Queries...
...The collection divides easily into four categories...
...Snyder majored in mythology as an undergraduate and did graduate work in linguistics, and these articles remind us that the references in his poetry to Amerindian lore are not merely evidence of a facile eclecticism...
...Since my taste runs to narration over revelation, I prefer the latter two...
...In fact, Snyder's Utopian ideal seems something of a cross between Huxley's Pala and Graves' New Crete...
...Snyder effectively balances the true against the false: "Looking around the ashram, found the Shivananda Ayurvedic Homeopathic Medecine shop and bought some Swami Shivananda Tooth-powder...
...Mean and arrogant, padding alone in the soft rain . . . sardonic sidewise glances and the heavy insolent swing of their blue genitals like weapons...
...There are seven essays, four short journals, three memoirs, and a translation...
...In contrast is this description of the opening of a festival parade: "Naga-sadhus march through town: the naked ascetics...
...Glacier Peak Wilderness Area" records a week-long camping and mountain-climbing trip with Allen Ginsberg and a woman called Justine...
...Very little poetry shows through his revolutionary tracts...
...For those who care to be forewarned, their titles are: "Buddhism and the Coming Revolution...
...Perhaps Snyder hoped to protect Earth House Hold from criticism with a double-layer shield...
...He is one of the best poets writing today, and it would be a shame to see him obscured in the general reaction that is eventually bound to overtake Pop culture and many of those who have overidentified themselves with it...
...The most rewarding way to peruse Earth House Hold is in tandem with The Back Country, for both deal with the same material and therefore complement each other well...
...Passage to More Than India...
...Then nap under blanket, more lovemaking, and learning elaborate Polynesian customs...
...I am told that this area of the subcontinent, "all exceedingly holy territory," sustains the greatest concentration of Hindu shrines anywhere, and apparently the greatest number of hoaxers as well...
...In The Back Country, brought out last year (New Directions, 128 pp., $4.00), he arranged his poems according to the setting that inspired them—the Far West, Japan, the South Pacific, India...
...and "Glacier Peak Wilderness Area" (1965)?are not carefully edited expository pieces, but rather random jottings that by their very casualness evoke a strong sense of immediacy...
...The book is composed of 15 prose pieces of uneven quality, apparently put together with the intention of demonstrating "the reciprocities and balances by which man lives on earth...
...In two book reviews reprinted from Midwest Folklore, he proves he can put together a lively essay that is nevertheless suitable for an academic journal—an especially rare accomplishment...
...Further, Eastern myths and mysticism are much more clearly and carefully expressed in the work of Alan Watts, for example, or Aldous Huxley and Robert Graves...
...to the poetic and philosophical...
...Then I went swimming and made love way out in the water, twilight, while she improvised a long song...
...One hopes that in his next book, Snyder—master craftsman that he can be—will exercise more selectivity...
...First, he advocates a particular form of social revolution, but one that is religiously informed...
...Snyder's occasionally tedious descriptions vary from the mundane or technical ("Anvil notch to White Pass backsight: azimuth 193...
...Ecology: 'eco' (oikos) meaning 'house' (cf...
...They have the timing of good short stories, and display all the wit the essays on the Dharma Revolution lack, even though they deal with Snyder's religious concerns...
...Tanker Notes"—which Snyder kept when working his passage home as a ship's fireman after a stay in Japan—ends with an account of his adventures with a Samoan hooker named Joanie while on shore leave in Pago Pago after weeks at sea...
...Reviewed by PETER GLASSGOLD Many who are familiar with Gary Snyder's carefully constructed poetry may be disappointed in his latest collection, Earth House Hold, or positively turned off by its subtitle: "Technical Notes & Queries To Fellow Dharma Revolutionaries...
...I think, however, that the journals and memoirs make the best reading because they are more a reflection of Snyder the poet than Snyder the publicist...
...The trouble, of course, is the Dharma Revolution...
...Fortunately, only five of the essays deal with the Dharma Revolution...
...A party of fishermen—two men, a woman and a child, struggling up trail come on us then...
...Still, the anecdotal bits are entertaining...
...Second, as a poet, Snyder insists upon his right to poetic license...
...Saying this is only to put Earth House Hold and its author into proper perspective, for if the book has any value at all, it is most emphatically not in its espousal of the "Dharma Revolution...
...Suwa-no-Se Island and the Banyan Ashram" tells of the founding of a religious commune on a small island, where Snyder married his Japanese wife, Masa...
...we recited the Four Vows together, and ended with three blasts on the conch...
...Significantly, the most recent pieces are dated 1967, the Year of the Flower Children—or as Snyder terms it, "40067 (reckoning roughly from the earliest cave paintings" —and even the most parochial-minded acid head would have to admit that things have gone downhill since then...
...This applies as well to his knowledge of Chinese...
...Yet as the 10 other pieces show, Snyder can handle his prose well...
...Yet as fine as these last pieces are, they do not succeed in redeeming the entire collection...
...Poetry and the Primitive...
...In the earliest of his journals, he mentions that part of his daily routine while working as a forest ranger was to "study Chinese until eleven...
...Allen looks on them graciously and explains, 'WE are forest beatniks.'") The memoirs are the best written pieces...
...Since it is in bad taste to condemn another man's religion, Snyder's politics are presumably made sacrosanct...
...I suggest that they be read last—and mostly as a reminder that we should not judge an artist by his politics or religion but by his art...
...Spring Sesshin at Shokoku-ji" details the daily routine at a rigorous seven-day Zen meditation retreat...
...ecumenical') : Housekeeping on Earth...
...He apparently studied well, for his smooth translation of a "Record of the Life of the Cha'an Master Po-Chang Huai-Hai" is one of the most informative pieces of Buddhist literature I have ever encountered...
...Religious truths are usually most effective when expressed thematically—as in poetry —and seem to lose something when transmuted into prose...
...It dyes the mouth red, tastes like gunpowder, and scratches...
...A Journey to Rishikesh and Hardwar" should be required reading for anyone interested in making a pilgrimage to India...
...The journals?Lookout's Journal" (1952-53...
Vol. 52 • August 1969 • No. 15
