Poet Gary Snyder speaks from the soul

Mountains and Rivers provides sound advice and imagery

Wednesday night in Finney Chapel renowned American poet Gary Snyder read selected parts of his most recently published work, Mountains and Rivers Without End, for an hour and a half to a large, attentive audience. The work is a long poem that he likens to Greek epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry and to Walt Whitman's famous "Leaves of Grass."

Mountains and Rivers is a panoramic view of his experiences all wrapped up in a sequential, flowing work. Interspersed between the sections of the poetry, he gave background information on myths from northwest Native American lore and traditional Japanese Noh plays. He also told anecdotes from his life experiences, thus sharing his sources of inspiration.

The experiences he shared were as varied as the rhythms he read with. He spoke of travelling from Seattle to San Francisco during the '60s to a jazzy, choppy beat. The time spent in solo reverie in the Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges he read with a quiet, steady tempo.

Through his words he created the feeling of sensory overload a traveller would feel in the marketplaces of India and Nepal with long word lists in rapid succession. All of these varied landscapes are brought together by a long panoramic view, like a Chinese horizontal landscape painting, the original inspiration for the poem.

As Snyder's work focuses on the natural environment, so does much of his activism. He has been active in the environmental movement since it began, and continues today with grassroots and educational groups. So, too, does Snyder's poetry educate readers about the natural world in which he lives, and by showing this particular beauty of a certain place, he inspires us to find our own place.

Mountains and Rivers Without End took many years to become a complete poem. By completing it, Snyder shows he has learned what it is to belong to a place. As Coyote, an important spirit in Native-American myths, says in Mountains and Rivers Without End, "You people should stay put. Learn your place. Do good things."

Snyder's reading was informal and natural, but at the same time no one in the audience escaped the seriousness and depth of what he was saying. He paused often to explain and once warned the audience that now was their only chance to leave if they wanted to sneak out early.

Obviously Snyder has learned his place, and it is at once huge in scope and intimate in detail, stretching all over the Western mountains and across the Pacific to the landscapes of Japan and China.

Inspiration without end: Gary Snyder, the renowned poet, was this semester's convocation speaker. Snyder is an environmentalist both in art and in life. Snyder read in Finney on Wednesday. (photo by John Matney)