Gary Snyder at the Art Institute of Chicago, November 10th, 1992

By Tim W. Brown

At least once a week I yearn to see stars, which city lights wash out of the nighttime sky,

along with any wisdom they might inspire. I pondered this thought, evidence of my personal

disconnectedness from nature, as I listened to Gary Snyder, who read his poetry to a large

audience at the Art Institute of Chicago on Tuesday, November 10, 1992.

Displacement is a phenomenon Snyder observes in most of the U.S. population, not just

city residents. What is needed, he explained in his opening remarks, is for "society to become

more at home in the Western Hemisphere." That Americans need to form a deeper attachment to

nature is a theme that emerged repeatedly in poems from two books he read from, No Nature, a

recent collection of selected poems, and Mountains and Rivers Without End, a work in progress.

According to Snyder, the danger of becoming alienated from nature is spiritual death. In

his poem "At Tower Peak," he rails against suburbia's advance across the landscape of southern

California. He likens the process to glaciers spreading through valleys and erasing the wilderness,

causing us to "wake to the same old world of no names," a world of landscapes that have lost

their distinctive identities. The effect: contemporary Americans find themselves in a spiritual ice

age, an "age of frozen hearts."

To reconnect, Snyder believes individuals need to become better custodians of the land.

Through a "move of the heart," we must take responsibility for preserving our environment, for

its own sake as well as for spiritual renewal. He denies that there is a uniform way to accomplish

this -- in "Off the Trail," he says "The trail is not the way/No path will get you there." Snyder's

own particular path is Zen Buddhism, which he studied for twelve years in Japan. His poem "The

Hump-Backed Flute Player" takes the form of a Buddhist meditation; in it Snyder catalogues the

far-flung Southwestern locales where this prehistoric stick-figure drawing has been found. He

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reverentially uses the proper name in addressing each geologic formation, so its own unique

identity is revealed.

Throughout the evening, Snyder alluded to Turtle Island, the primeval name for the North

American continent, and also title of his 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Turtle Island is an

imaginary construct of interconnected ecosystems; it is defined by plant families and watersheds,

not artificially imposed political boundaries. With Turtle Island, Snyder's mythopoeic impulse

reaches its culmination: in an "educational/poetical/spiritual move" he combines Zen Buddhism,

Native American myth and local lore into a poetry that is at once "bioregionally intense" and

cosmopolitan.

Further elaborating on poetics in a post-reading discussion with critic Edward Hirsch, the

evening's host, Snyder called the American poetic tradition "circumscribed," both in number of

styles available and in avoidance of political subjects. He predicted that in the next century there

will be a "fusion of poetic styles" from around the world, whose sources will include Asia, Africa

and Oceania. As more and more immigrants arrive on these shores and try their hands at poetry,

the myths and forms they bring from their native lands will enrich American literature.

Snyder's envisioning of a truly multicultural American poetry brought one troubling issue

to mind. His reading was held in conjunction with the Art Institute's "The Ancient Americas: Art

from Sacred Landscapes" exhibit, which made me wonder why a Native American or Latin

American poet was not asked to read. Anticipating this concern, Snyder at one point asserted that

"we are all empowered to talk about the landscape," and that his aim is to do this "as well as a

white boy can do it." Equipped with good poetic judgment, a genuinely earnest manner and a

long-standing activist reputation, Snyder did it very well indeed.