Poetry for Students

300 Poetry for Students

destructive or productive of integral relations. It is

closely linked to shamanism, which is in turn linked

to poetry. All three are cultural activities—forms

of meditation or ritual—that aim to bring the

hunter-shaman-poet into intimate contact with an-

imals. “The shaman-poet,” as Snyder writes in

Earth House Hold: Technical Notes & Queries for

Fellow Dharma Revolutionaries(1969), “is simply

a man whose mind reaches easily out into all man-

ners of shapes and other lives, and gives song to

dreams.” Shamanism is Snyder’s metaphor for

imagining an ideology of human-animal-wild rela-

tions to replace the mainline Western ideology.

The first poem of the Hunting section, “first

shaman song,” situates Snyder on an apparent vi-

sion-quest, fasting in isolation to achieve a dislo-

cation of the self and open a chink to shamanistic

wisdom. The section then enacts textually a

shamanistic experience. In “this poem is for bear”

Snyder retells a local native tale—shamanistic

lore—about the union of a woman and a bear. Com-

menting on the story, the poet debunks his own po-

tential, as if he is not yet ready for transformation.

The critical piece in the section is “this poem is for

deer.” It depicts first the ugly practice of shooting

deer from cars, in which Snyder has apparently

been involved at least once, and moves toward an

experience of expiation or kenosis: “Deer don’t

want to die for me. / I’ll drink sea-water / Sleep on

beach pebbles in the rain / Until the deer come

down to die / in pity for my pain.”

The third section opens with “second shaman

song,” in which the speaker initiates a second phase

of his wilderness quest, “Quivering in nerve and

muscle / Hung in the pelvic cradle / Bones propped

against roots / A blind flicker of nerve.... / A mud-

streaked thigh.” The section then presents a series

of purgative confrontations with evil, fear, and

death that include “Maudgalyayana saw hell” and

“Maitreya the future Buddha.” One poem describes

John Muir on Mount Ritter. Despairing of finding

a foothold or handhold to lead him from the rock

face, Muir discovers that “life blaze[es] / Forth

again with a preternatural clearness.... every rift

and flaw in / The rock was seen as through a mi-

croscope.” Snyder achieves a vision of the Earth as

feminine Buddhist Prajna: “The Mother whose

body is the Universe / Whose breasts are Sun and

Moon, / the statue of Prajna / From Java: the quiet

smile, / The naked breasts.”

The volume ends by juxtaposing the literal and

mythical versions of an event. The final poem de-

scribes a fire on Sourdough Mountain that is fought

all night. In the morning the firefighters “saw / the

last glimmer of the morning star.” Snyder gives the

event mythical significance by alluding to the an-

cient city of Troy burning. He asserts that the

“mountains are your mind” and sees “the last wisp

of smoke float up / Into the absolute cold / Into the

spiral whorls of fire / The storms of the Milky Way”

as “ ‘Buddha incense in an empty world.’ ” With

this successful conclusion to the “alternation and

interpenetration” of myth and text, he is able to say

with Thoreau in the last line that “the sun is but a

morning star” and look forward to regeneration.

Between 1956, when he won a First American

Zen Centre scholarship, and 1968, when he re-

turned to the United States permanently, Snyder

spent most of his time in Kyoto, Japan, where he

studied as a lay monk in the rigorous Rinzai sect

of Zen under his beloved teacher Oda Sesso Roshi,

who died in 1966. He was married to the poet

Joanne Kyger between 1960 and 1964. The Back

Country(1967) charts his experience of living in

Japan, his visit to India with Kyger and Allen Gins-

berg in 1962, and his first return to the United States

in 1966. Along with Regarding Wave(1969) and

Earth House Hold, a collection of notes, reviews,

and essays, The Back Countryestablished Snyder

as a poet and extended his fame as a countercul-

tural hero. The first critical article on his work was

published in 1968.

Studying Zen as a lay monk in Kyoto, Snyder

gradually came into contact with a Japanese Beat

scene, a group of people calling themselves the

Bum Academy, and developed an important friend-

ship with the wandering poet and teacher Nanao

Sakaki. He also met, in 1966, Masa Uehara, a grad-

uate student in English at Ochanomizu Women’s

University. Following Sakaki with several others,

Snyder and Masa settled on a sparsely populated

volcanic island off the Japanese coast called

Suwanose in 1967, where they established the

Banyan Ashram, an experiment in communal liv-

ing. With Sakaki acting as priest, Snyder and Masa

were married on 6 August 1967 at 6:30 A.M. on

the lip of the active volcano. The Suwanose expe-

rience is described in the last essay of Earth House

Hold, concluding the movement from solitary

seeker of Riprapto marriage and community. “It

is possible at last,” he writes, “for Masa and me to

imagine a little what the ancient—archaic—mind

and life of Japan were. And to see what could be

restored to the life today.” In December 1968 Sny-

der, Masa, and their new son, Kai, returned to the

United States and set up residence in San Francisco.

A second son, Gen, was born in 1969.

True Night

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