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 thi...