The American Century: Literature since 1945 609mixed media event. Something that McClure says of his own work (gathered in
volumes like Passages (1956) and The Last American Valentine: Illustrated Poems to
Seduce and Destroy (2008)) could, in fact, be applied to Whalen’s poetry (a selection
of which is to be found in On Bear’s Head (1969) and Heavy Breathing (1983)): “I am
the body, the animal, the poem / is a gesture of mine.” With McClure, however, the
“gesture” is a much more unnerving one because he chooses to confront and
challenge the reader and, whenever necessary, uses violence as a means of revelation.
“The poem ... is black and white,” says McClure in “Hymn to St. Geryon” (1959),
“I PICK IT UP BY THE TAIL AND HIT / YOU OVER THE HEAD WITH IT.” What
McClure wants, he has said, is to “BREAK UP THE FORMS AND FEEL THINGS,”
to “Kick in the walls,” literary, social, and psychological – and that includes the
conventional “walls” or barriers between writer and reader. This is, perhaps,
Thoreau’s and Whitman’s notion of self-emancipation through writing carried
about as far as it can go: “my viewpoint is egocentric,” McClure has admitted, “The
poem is as much of me as an arm.” But while favoring “the direct emotional statement
from the body,” like those earlier writers McClure is also intent on addressing and
embracing the body, or identity, of his audience. “Self-dramatization is part of a
means to belief and Spirit,” he claims; and “hopefully ... the reader” will learn about
this by challenge and model – from the emancipation enacted by the “loose chaos of
words / on the page.”
Liberation is also an impulse at the heart of the work of Gary Snyder (1930–),
who was born in San Francisco and has worked as a logger, forester, and farmer in
the Northwest. “As much as the books I’ve read the jobs I’ve done have been
significant in shaping me,” Snyder said in his book of essays Earth House Hold
(1969). “My sense of body and language and the knowledge that ... sensitivity and
awareness are not limited to educated people.” Most of his poems (gathered in such
collections as A Range of Poems (1966), Turtle Island (1974), No Nature (1992), and
Danger on Peaks (2004)) are direct and simple, characterized by an elemental
reverence for existence and salvaging poetry from the most primitive human
experiences. Unmarked by the normal tensions of language, they depend on lucidity
and specificity, open forms and the “rhythms of physical work ... and life” for their
impact. The simplicity of Snyder’s work is not simplification, however. It derives in
part from his devotion to Zen Buddhism; and it reflects his need to fill the “Intricate
layers of emptiness” where “Human tenderness scuttles / Down dry endless cycles”
with the peace of enlightenment, purification, and quiet. Zen encourages the active
appreciation of the natural world as an agent of vision, transcendence, and
elimination of the self; and its art of deft brushstrokes dispenses with calculated
technique and structured reasoning in favor of immediate, spontaneous attention to
living things. “A poet faces two directions,” Snyder suggests, “one is the world of
people and language and society, and the other is the nonhuman, nonverbal world
... the inner world, as it is itself, before language ... custom,... culture.” Zen has
helped Snyder to bridge the gap between these two worlds, to achieve “a new sense”
via a passionate encounter with objects; it has enabled him to find “the way of
activity,” positive silence through the movements of body and speech.GGray_c05.indd 609ray_c 05 .indd 609 8 8/1/2011 7:31:34 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 34 PM