Gary Snyder at the Nourse Theater. Arts & Lecture Series SF
Heard Gary Snyder read from his new book, THIS PRESENT MOMENT . He is 85 years old, and still agile and dexterous in his speech and thought. One of the significant questions asked of him, was why the return to Greek imagery in these poems. Snyder replied that he had returned to the Western world, that California was a better ecology in which to live, as he does in the Sierra Nevada mountains north of Sacramento than anywhere in Asia. He was unwilling to let anyone politicize him in their leading questions about his relationship to government and ecology in California. Governor Brown was in the audience, sitting right behind my friend, met at the last lecture, though he entered and departed without comment. Snyder was educated at Berkeley and plays an active role in the Buddhist Center, there;, having missed those lectures, I was happy to finally hear him read. He read many of his poems, without much commentary. The title derives from this poem, "This present moment/That lives on/To become/Long ago."
The first collection of poems since "Danger on Peaks", 2004, of which I have a copy, Snyder is ranging over the planet, with journeys to the Dolomites in France, to the north shore of Lake Tahoe, from Paris and Tuscany to the shrine at Delphi, and from Santa Fe to Sella Pass...mapping the last decade. A path and a trail of complexity and lyrical regard, of the poet's eighth decade. "Beautiful domestic poems of his great career, poems about his work as a homesteader and householder, as a father and husband, as a friend and neighbor" values which he espoused in his remarks in the Arts & Lecture Series at Nourse Theater in San Francisco. A centerpiece is about the loss of his wife, and the grief and sorrow in the dying of his wife. As a friend is quoted in one of these new poems: "I met the other lately in the far back of a bar, musicians playing near the window and he sweetly told me: Listen to that music. The self we hold so dear will soon be gone."
Looking through the table of contents, here are some of the titles: "The Earth's Wild Places", "Siberian Outpost", Anger, Cattle and Achilles; Charlers Freer in a Sierra Snowstorm; Why California Will Never be Tuscany"; Chiura Obata's Moon; Morning Songs, Goose Lake; Eiffel Tundra; Mu Chi's Persimmons; Go Now.
The radio broadcast for this May 5 reading airs on June 7 Sunday at 1;00 pm, and then Tuesday evening at 8:00 pm. KQED - FM 88.5
I know that feeling that all we hold dear will soon be gone. That is why it is good to somehow be responsible for sending it all on its way now. I looked at a photo of me at Fudan University at the Ibsen conference in 2008 and wonder how much I could have aged in 7 years...and in my third year of a return to America. To still do something, to say something is the task.
The first collection of poems since "Danger on Peaks", 2004, of which I have a copy, Snyder is ranging over the planet, with journeys to the Dolomites in France, to the north shore of Lake Tahoe, from Paris and Tuscany to the shrine at Delphi, and from Santa Fe to Sella Pass...mapping the last decade. A path and a trail of complexity and lyrical regard, of the poet's eighth decade. "Beautiful domestic poems of his great career, poems about his work as a homesteader and householder, as a father and husband, as a friend and neighbor" values which he espoused in his remarks in the Arts & Lecture Series at Nourse Theater in San Francisco. A centerpiece is about the loss of his wife, and the grief and sorrow in the dying of his wife. As a friend is quoted in one of these new poems: "I met the other lately in the far back of a bar, musicians playing near the window and he sweetly told me: Listen to that music. The self we hold so dear will soon be gone."
Looking through the table of contents, here are some of the titles: "The Earth's Wild Places", "Siberian Outpost", Anger, Cattle and Achilles; Charlers Freer in a Sierra Snowstorm; Why California Will Never be Tuscany"; Chiura Obata's Moon; Morning Songs, Goose Lake; Eiffel Tundra; Mu Chi's Persimmons; Go Now.
The radio broadcast for this May 5 reading airs on June 7 Sunday at 1;00 pm, and then Tuesday evening at 8:00 pm. KQED - FM 88.5
I know that feeling that all we hold dear will soon be gone. That is why it is good to somehow be responsible for sending it all on its way now. I looked at a photo of me at Fudan University at the Ibsen conference in 2008 and wonder how much I could have aged in 7 years...and in my third year of a return to America. To still do something, to say something is the task.
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