Happy Birthday Gary Snyder, American poet, essayist, ecologist, teacher, steward of the earth, Beat hero and Zen master who is 89 today. Despite his reluctance to identify with the Beat title, he has been an undeniable influence on the Beat gneration and its writers. He was fictionalised as the character Japhy Ryder in Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums and helped initiate the San Francisco Renaissance by organising poetry readings with his close friend Allen Ginsberg among others, thus ushering in the Beats as a recognised social force.
His numerous books have engaged with so many different subjects, covering the various intricate intimacies of life, bringing together ecology and spirituality, who also draws on social anarchism in developing his perspective and philosophical orientation.
His collection Turtle Island which won the Pulizer prize in 1975, has sold over a hundred thousand copies. ' Turtle Island swims/ in the ocean -sky -swirl void / biting its tail / while the worlds go/ on-and-off/ winking.' Here is a link to a previous post related to him:-
https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2014/09/stand-up-for-earth-gary-snyder-b-8530.html
The following poem is from his 1970 collection Regarding Wave. Cheers Gary Snyder, such a wise individual, who has had huge impact on my own reasoning.
Revolution In The Revolution In The Revolution
The country surrounds the city
The back country surrounds the country
"From the masses to the masses" the most
Revolutionary consciousness is to be found
Among the most ruthlessly exploited classes:
Animals, trees, water, air grasses
We must pass through the stage of the
"Dictatorship of the Unconscious" before we can
Hope for the withering-away of the states
And finally arrive at true Communionism
if the capitalists and imperialists
are the exploiters, the masses are the workers.
and the party
is the communist
if civilzation
is the exploiter, the masses is nature.
and the party
is the poets.
if the abstact rational intellect
is the exploiter, the masses is the unconscious
and the party
is the yogins.
& POWER
comes out of the seed-syllables of mantras.
Reprinted from
REGARDING WAVE
New Directions 1970.
