Poetry for Students

284 Poetry for Students

Harold and Lois Snyder. His family moved to Wash-

ington and then to Oregon, and Snyder attended high

school in Portland, Oregon. After graduation, he en-

rolled at Reed College, Portland, graduating in 1951

with a bachelor of arts degree in anthropology and

literature. Snyder then entered a graduate program

at Indiana University but left the following year and

returned to San Francisco. In 1953, he entered the

University of California, Berkeley, pursuing gradu-

ate study in Oriental languages. During this period,

he also worked as a lumberjack, trail maker, and for-

est firewatcher. He also became part of a commu-

nity of West Coast writers which included Allen

Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, who became the lead-

ers of the Beat Generation in the 1950s.

In 1956, Snyder traveled to Japan to study Zen

Buddhism and Japanese language. He remained

abroad for most of the next twelve years, studying

Zen and traveling to places such as India and In-

donesia. It was during these years that his first two

poetry collections, Riprap(1959) and Myths &

Texts(1960), were published.

During the second part of the 1960s, when Sny-

der divided his time between the United States and

Japan, he produced a steady stream of publications.

These included Riprap & Cold Mountain Poemsin

1965 (the Cold Mountain poems are Snyder’s trans-

lations of poems by Han-Shan); Six Sections from

Mountains and Rivers without End(1965);A Range

of Poems, which included translations of the mod-

ern Japanese poet, Miyazawa Kenji (1966); The

Back Country(1968); and Regarding Wave(1970).

He also published a collection of essays titled Earth

House Hold: Technical Notes and Queries to Fel-

low Dharma Revolutionaries(1969).

In 1971, Snyder built his own house along the

Yuba River in the northern Sierra Nevada moun-

tains. Three years later, he published Turtle Island,

which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

and established his national reputation. Axe Han-

dles, which won the American Book Award from

the Before Columbus Foundation, followed in

1983, as did Passage through India, a journal of

the trip Snyder made to India in the 1960s.

In 1985, Snyder became a professor at the Uni-

versity of California, Davis, and three more poetry

collections followed over the next decade: Left out

in the Rain: New Poems 1947–1986(1986);No Na-

ture: New and Selected Poems(1992); and Moun-

tains and Rivers without End(1996), which Snyder

had been working on for several decades. Snyder

also published The Real Work: Interviews & Talks,

1964–1979(1980) and The Practice of the Wild

(1990), a collection of essays which develop Sny-

der’s ecological ideas. A representative selection of

his work was published in 1999 as The Gary Sny-

der Reader: Prose, Poetry, and Translations,

1952–1998.

Poem Summary

Stanza 1

In the first line of “True Night,” the poet is fast

asleep in bed. Then, there is a clattering sound.

Gradually, the poet is pulled awake by the persis-

tent noise. As his mind focuses, he realizes that the

sounds are caused by a raccoon that has entered the

kitchen. Metal bowls are falling, jars are being

pushed against each other, and many plates are also

tumbling to the floor. Immediately, he springs up

to take action. The word “ritual” suggests that this

is not an isolated occurrence but has happened

many times before.

The poet rises unsteadily from his bed, grabs

a stick and dashes off in the darkness. He shouts

angrily and describes himself as a “huge pounding

demon,” which must be the way the raccoon sees

him. But, the raccoons—it now transpires that there

True Night

Gary Snyder

67082 _PFS_V19truen 283 - 310 .qxd 9/16/2003 10:00 M Page 284