Volume 19 307that clog it in an ascesis that marks the beginning
of his quest. In Riprap(1959) he turns from Amer-
ica toward the East and begins the motion out and
away that will preoccupy him for 15 years. Myths
& Texts(1960) promotes Snyder’s emerging vision
of process in a dialectical structure which resolves
that all form is a momentary stay, “stresses that
come into being each instant.” In a world where
“It’s all falling or burning” the experience of place
is only a fiction, and there can be therefore noth-
ing to return to. Mountains and Rivers without End
(1965–) will contain 25 sections and is as yet un-
finished. This may prove the major work of Sny-
der’s career, though, as in Pound’s Cantos,the poet
can seem more committed to the theory than the
poetry of this poem. The theory holds, in Snyder’s
words, that “every poem in Mountains and Rivers
takes a different form and has a different strategy.”
A poem built upon the impulse of turning away
from its own realized structures, Mountain and
Riverswould seem a work about journeys, about
“Passing / through.” Its fascination however with
what Snyder has called the “focal image” and with
a realm above the Blue Sky also reaches toward
permanence. These growing tensions as well as the
poem’s quality as a running rumination on all that
Snyder holds dear place it at this point beyond any
developmental model of Snyder’s career.
The Back Country(1968) is in this argument
the pivotal book, the one openly engaged with Sny-
der’s own history of turning. What begins as a
reprise of Riprap—in “Far West” Snyder amasses
his reasons for moving and forgetting—proceeds by
discovering an opposing impulse to return and re-
member. A poem like “Dodger Point Lookout”
bears comparison to “Tintern Abbey” in its accep-
tance of meaning as a function of elapsed time. The
return of the poet to a beloved spot five years later
“brings it all back,” and he admits that the con-
serving power of memory is what keeps him “sane.”
Regarding Wave(1970) shores up the position
gained in The Back Countryby valorizing a new
and conserving pattern—the wave—capable of
storing and releasing the energy which Snyder had
earlier discovered in the stream. A book about
“What’s Meant by Here.” Turtle Island(1974) reg-
ister Snyder’s emerging commitment to a structure
that stays in place. Homesteading replaces hitch-
hiking as the privileged human activity as Snyder’s
act of settlement in California expands into a sense
of stewardship over the entire planet.
This rapid summary brings us back to Axe
Handles,Snyder’s first book of poems in nearly adecade and one in which he celebrates the whim
and wisdom of middle age. In Axe HandlesSnyder
begins with work around the house and ends with
journeys. Travel is now seen as the venturing out
from a hearth, and thus the controlling metaphors... are of structures that return or contain.
Axe Handles is divided into three parts,
“Loops,” “Little Songs for Gaia,” and finally
“Nets,” which itself contains four sections. At first
glance, the book may seem too intricate or arbi-
trary in its structure, but with further reading sec-
tions and subsections reveal important groupings
of Snyder’s current concerns. The book follows the
poet’s movement of mind as he attempts to dis-
cover a coherence among commitments that are
personal, familial, and cultural in scope.
“True Night,” the book’s central poem and the
concluding poem of the first section, most suc-
cinctly dramatizes the choice Snyder has made in
favor of returning and settling. But the poems
which surround it show the full content of the
poet’s choice. Axe Handlesis a declaration of af-
filiations to an ideal of “home,” an ideal that has
grown in Snyder’s imagination to include the full
range of a life’s attachments, from the most per-
sonal and local to the most public and distant. At
the personal level, Snyder takes firm possession of
his own biography, noting memories which reveal
patterns of self-definition (“Look Back,” “Soy
Sauce,” “Delicate Criss-crossing Beetle Trails Left
in the Sand”). He writes of family and community
with ideals of mutual support and teaching
(“Changing Diapers,” “Painting the North San Juan
School”). He writes about the possibilities and lim-
itations of government (“Talking Late with the
Governor about the Budget”). He returns again and
again to the mooring certainties of hard physical
True NightThe book follows the
poet’s movement of mind as
he attempts to discover a
coherence among
commitments that are
personal, familial, and
cultural in scope.”67082 _PFS_V19truen 283 - 310 .qxd 9/16/2003 10:00 M Page 307