In a Dark Time … The Eye Begins to See

Section II of Mountains and Rivers Without End begins with a poem called “Market” and ends with a poem called “The Hump-backed Flute Player.” Thematically it’s not always clear what the point of the section is, but generally the section seems to be about the “baggage” that we carry with us. And, as we all [...]

Section III of Mountains and Rivers Without End seems to focus on the idea of purification and rejoining with mother earth. The section begins with a poem called The Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais. It begins: Walking up and around the long ridge of Tamalapais “Bay Mountain,” circling and climbing—chanting to show respect and to clarify [...]

The last section of Mountains and Rivers Without End focuses on man’s connection with the earth and our relationship to it. The first poem “Old Woodrat’s Stinky House” ends with Coyote saying to mankind, “ You people should stay put here,/ learn your place,/ do good things.” Learning our place and doing good things for [...]

I may have put poetry on hold lately, but I haven’t forgotten that this is, after all, primarily a poetry blog. When I read that Gary Snyder’s latest volume of poetry danger on peaks featured poems on Mt St Helens and, as the jacket notes, “poems in an American/Japanese hybrid, a form of haibun, “haiku [...]