Snyder begins the Journey

Mountains and Rivers Without End is admirably ambitious. As the jacket notes, it was “Initially inspired by East Asian landscape painting and his [Snyder’s] own experience within ‘a chaotic universe where everything is in place,’ Snyder’s vision was further stimulated by Asian art and drama, Gaia history, Native American performance and storytelling, the practices of Zen Buddhism and the varied landscapes of Japan, California, Alaska, Australia, China, and Taiwan.”

The book begins with a poem called “Endless Streams and Mountains” which describes a famous Chinese scroll that was the original inspiration for this work. It begins, “ Clearing the mind and sliding in/ to that created space,/ a web of waters streaming over rocks,/seeing this land from a boat or a lake,/ or a broad slow river,/ coasting by.” This line is further amplified later in the poem with the lines, “The Fashioner of Things/ has no original intentions/ Mountains and rivers/ are spirit, condensed.” In other words, this long poem suggests a way of clearing the mind and seeing the world from the perspective of spirit, the spirit derived from experiencing and understanding mountains and rivers. This beginning poem ends with the lines “Walking on walking, /underfoot earth turns/Streams and mountains never stay the same.”

The book ends with a poem entitled “Finding the Space in the Heart.” Echoing the phrase “clearing the mind” in the first poem in the book are the lines, “O, ah! The/ awareness of emptiness/ brings forth a heart of compassion.” In the middle of this long poem the narrator “Walked the hills for a day,/ looked out where it all drops away,/ discovered a path/ of carved stone inscriptions tucked into the sagebrush/ ‘Stomp out greed’/’The best things in life are not things.’/ words placed by an old desert sage.” The poem closes with the lines “—the wideness, the / foolish loving spaces/ full of heart. Walking on walking/ underfoot earth turns/ Streams and mountains never stay the same.” These lines echo the opening poem, suggesting the closing of the sacred circle, the empty space encircled.

These lines are followed, finally, by, “The space goes on./But the wet black brush/tip drawn to a point,/lifts away,” ending the book exactly the same way the Chinese scroll was ended, as any work of art must always be ended.

The difficult part, of course, is transforming the space between the beginning and the end of the work, the void, as it were, into a spiritual space, a “holy” space that illuminates the whole. In essence, the poem seems like the narrative of Snyder’s journey, both a physical and spiritual journey. I suspect, as described in some of the web sites I referred to yesterday, that’s why Snyder has given readings of the book accompanied by musicians or delivered part of it while walking around the mountains he has hiked. I suspect his being there, actually being able to see him and listen to him helps to add another dimension to the work.

Section I of the work focuses on the journeys he has taken, beginning with “Night Highway 99,” which describes the physical journey from northern Washington to San Francisco. In essence, this seems similar to Kerouac’s On the Road with lines like “The road that’s followed goes forever; in half a minute crossed and left behind” and “Each time you go that road it gets more straight.” The poem “Three Worlds, Three Realms, Six Roads” goes even farther, moving from Seattle to San Francisco to Kyoto and ending with the lines “Throwing away the things you’ll never need/Stripping down/ Going home.” You get the feeling that he’s throwing away more than just “things” and that going “home” doesn’t mean moving back to Seattle.

The final journey, though is a non-physical journey to “The Blue Sky,” “…a world called/ PURE AS LAPIS LAZULI/ its Buddha is called Master of Healing,/ AZURE RADIANCE TATHAGATA” though Snyder points out that it would “take you twelve thousand summer vacations/ driving a car due east all day every day” to reach the edge of this realm. This journey passes through “The Spell of the Master of Healing”: “Namo bhagaate bhaishajyaguru-vaidurya … to “T’u chueh a border tribe near China to “Shakyamuni.” Ultimately, if you accept Snyder’s map, and I’m not sure that I do, you end up at “The Blue Sky/is the land of/ OLD MAN MEDICINE BUDDHA/ where the eagle that flies out of sight/ flies.”

It’s not always easy to follow, or, perhaps, to accept, Snyder’s journey, but so far it’s certainly an interesting one.

I Expected More from Mountains and Rivers

I’ve been looking forward to reading Mountains and Rivers Without End since I read Dharma Bums several months ago. In fact, much of my motivation for studying the Beat poets was to gain the background needed to fully appreciate this work. I figured this would be the climax of that study, and I could move on and finally begin reading the The Unbearable Lightness of Being that Ted recommended to me just before going into the hospital for surgery.

Everything I read on the web has been wildly enthusiastic about Mountains and Rivers Without End. Look at any of the following:

Anima Mundi

Holistic Hipster

The Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais

Gary Snyder Reading

Maybe that should have been a warning point. But it wasn’t.

Now, admittedly, and regrettably, my background in Asian studies is nowhere near Snyder’s. Though my knowledge of Asian literature and religion is nowhere comparable to his, I have read widely in Asian literature, both in college courses and through personal exploration. I’ve visited the same Asian museums in Seattle and San Francisco and admired the same works. I’ve practiced Sumi painting and have learned to appreciate the skill required in such artwork. In other words, we both share an appreciation of Zen and its many artistic manifestations.

Perhaps more importantly, we were raised in the Pacific Northwest at approximately the same time and both developed the same love of the outdoors. I imagine that I’ve spent roughly the same time wandering the woods and mountains as he has, and I doubt that anyone could love them any more than I do.

I admire his attempts to protect the environment, particularly as that has been one of my greatest goals in the last thirty years. I belong to The Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy, Greenpeace, etc. and have devoted the greatest part of my charitable contributions to those institutions.

When I read “The Making of Mountains and Rivers Without End,” Snyder’s essay about the book, I could identify with virtually everything Snyder said. This was, for me, at least, to be the crowning achievement of the Beat movement.

But it wasn’t. Despite the fact that I find innumerable passages that I identify with and there are several short sections I love, I didn’t identify with the “vision” as a whole. Maybe Jeff Ward is right when he says, “I think that all of them fail in one way or another, but it’s America’s nature to try and fail.” I’ll be trying to figure out in the next few days why the vision in Mountains and Rivers Without End doesn’t work for me.

Wonder Why this Picture Appeals to Me So Much

While visiting the Morris Graves’ art exhibition last weekend, I also picked up a book by Gaylen Hansen, an Eastern Washington artist. Since browsing through the book, I’ve been haunted by this particular image, "Three Wolves." It’s not the typical kind of artwork I’m attracted to, but there is something primitive and powerful about it.

Perhaps it has something to do with the unusual angle of the shot. Perhaps it’s the juxtaposition of the wolves, the moon and the triangle. The painting makes me uncomfortable. I like that. And that worries me, too.

I wonder if they’re waiting for me to fall? I wonder if this is what has been appearing in my dreams for the last four months and waking me up every night since my operation?

Strangely enough, I’m a big wolf fan and have donated money to programs that have tried to reintroduce them into the wild. So, why should they turn on me? Don’t know. And that haunts me, too. You think they’re ungrateful?

There’s so much more that I don’t know than I do know. Sometimes that haunts me, too. I wonder what Hansen knows that I don’t know? How could he know that this painting would haunt me?

You can find Gaylen Hansen stuff all over the web, though I don’t know why you would want to.

Linda Hodges Gallery in Seattle is having a show of his works, apparently.

Schneider Museum of Art has several paintings.

Always Save the Best for Last

There are a number of poems in the last third of Overtime that appealed to me. Most of these discussed the connection between place and inspiration, a subject that has been of particular interest to me lately. In fact, as I was hiking the Columbia Gorge today I was wondering whether it belonged to me or I belonged to it. In my recent readings I have sensed more and more a connection to those artists who come from similar backgrounds.

Interestingly enough, though, this first poem suggests that the opposite is true. Early on Whalen seemed to feel that sitting in the woods under a tree contemplating life like Henry David Thoreau was going to be an integral part of his writing:

Homage to St. Patrick, Garcia Lorca, & the Itinerant Grocer
FOR M-D. SCHNEIDER

A big part of this page (a big part of my head)
Is missing. That cabin where I expected to sit in the
Woods and write a novel got sold
out from under my imagination

I had it all figured out
in the green filter of a vine-maple shade
The itinerant grocer would arrive every week
There was no doubt in my mind that I’d have money
To trade for cabbages and bread

Where did that vision take place-maybe Arizona
Or New Mexico, where trees are much appreciated-

I looked forward to having many of my own
possessed them in a nonexistent future green world of lovely prose
Lost them in actual present poems in Berkeley
All changed, all strange, all new; none green.

Tassajara, 17:iii78

Interestingly enough, though, Whalen ends up writing his poetry in Berkeley and San Francisco. Perhaps we cannot choose our inspiration, perhaps it chooses us. Some of Whalen’s best poetry seems to be inspired by the practice of his Zen Buddhism, not by the environment, though I, perhaps because of my experiences, am drawn to those poems that call on both the environment and on his experiences with nature.

One of my favorite poems in this section is “The Bay Trees Were About to Bloom:”

The Bay Trees Were About to Bloom

For each of us there is a place
Wherein we will tolerate no disorder.
We habitually clean and reorder it,
But we allow many other surfaces and regions
To grow dusty, rank and wild.

So I walk as far as a clump of bay trees
Beside the creek’s milky sunshine
To hunt for words under the stones
Blessing the demons also that they may be freed
From Hell and demonic being
As I might be a cop, "Awright, move it along, folks,
It’s all over, now, nothing more to see, just keep
Moving right along"

I can move along also
"Bring your little self and come on"
What I wanted to see was a section of creek
Where the west bank is a smooth basalt cliff
Huge tilted slab sticking out of the mountain
Rocks on the opposite side channel all the water
Which moves fast, not more than a foot deep,
Without sloshing or foaming.
Tassajara, 1J:ii79

It does seem to me that I do have special places like this that I come back to, places that are “sacred to me.” These places inspire us by their very nature. These places are like a current running through us that ties us to who we are. Whether these are actual places or virtual places may well be debatable, of course.

“What About It?” coincidentally enough seems to directly state ideas that flashed through my head as I hiked Wahkanee Falls today. How could it not be a favorite?

What About It?

When I began to grow old I searched out the Land
Of the Gods in the West, where our people have always said it is.
Once I floated there on the water. Once I flew there.
I heard their music and saw the magic dancing.
They appeared in many shapes; once as kachina,
Once I could only see shining feet and radiant clothes
Their houses blend into water, trees and stone.
A curtain moved. Water fell in certain order.
Sometimes there was a great mirror of polished bronze.
Other messages were smell of hinoki, sugi, gingko
Newly watered stones.
The land itself delivers a certain intelligence.

How embarrassing to note that four days are gone.
All I can say right now is I can see clouds in the sky
If I stand still and look out the window.
Diane Di Prima came and told me, "If we leave
Two hours of the day open for them
The poems will come in or out or however;
Anyway, to devote time in return for a place
That makes us accessible to them."
San Francisco, 17-28;iv:7&

For me, at least, “The land itself delivers a certain intelligence.” And strangely enough, the kind of land he describes here, one with water “water, trees and stone” are precisely the kind of places that inspire my creativity. Of course, so far my creativity, unlike Whalen’s, has not resulted in “poems.” But that does not necessarily mean that they don’t inspire another type of creativity.

Although “Chanson d’Outre Tombe” isn’t the last poem in Overtime somehow it seems appropriate to end this review with this poem:

Chanson d’Outre Tombe

They said we was nowhere
Actually we are beautifully embalmed
in Pennsylvania
They said we wanted too much.
Gave too little, a swift hand-job
no vaseline.
We were geniuses with all kinds
embarrassing limitations
o if only we would realize our potential
o if only that awful self-indulgence
& that shoddy politics of irresponsibility
o if only we would grow up, shut up, die
& so we did & do & chant beyond
the cut-rate grave digged
by indignant reviewers
o if we would only lay down & stay
THERE-In California, Pennsylvania
Where we keep leaking our nasty radioactive
waste like old plutonium factory
Wrecking your white expensive world
Tassajara, 27di1d979

No matter how I or Diane may feel about particular Beat poets, they are, indeed, a phenomena well worth paying attention to. They wrenched literature and poetry from the University world and dragged it screaming into the everyday world of beat despair. Whether that is a good or bad thing is perhaps debatable, but I, for one, the only one I can speak for, think that poetry is too powerful to be limited by artificial classifications. All of us are better off when we are inspired by poetry, or, any form of art, for that matter.

Here’s a chapbook of more Whalen poems

Here’s another review of Overtime