Gary Snyder is a famous American poet, environmentalist and educator. His early days at college kindled in him interest in poetry and he successfully published some of his early poems. He went to the University of California to study Asian culture and languages. Here he got a chance to visit Japan to study Zen where he became the disciple of Miura Isshu and studied various ancient texts. He was greatly influenced by the culture and converted to Buddhism. During this time he published many poems which depicted his experiences of life. He further published a collection of his poems titled ‘The Back Country’ which were a record of his experiences in the last 15 years. In the next three decades he published various poems including the ‘Pulitzer Prize’ winner book ‘Turtle Island’. He went on to become a professor at the University of California and still works as the professor emeritus of English. His writings, thoughts, poems, books and work have a large readership. Here is a compilation of quotations and sayings by Gary Snyder on naturalism, environment, ecology, spirituality, suffering, truth, coffee, responsibility and books.
Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.
Gary Snyder
When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own.
Gary Snyder
Stay together
learn the flowers
go light
Gary Snyder
Three-fourths of philosophy and literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering.
All that we did was human,
stupid, easily forgiven,
Not quite right.
Gary Snyder
With no surroundings there can be no path, and with no path one cannot become free.
Gary Snyder
All this new stuff goes on top
turn it over, turn it over
wait and water down
from the dark bottom
turn it inside out
let it spread through
Sift down even.
Watch it sprout.
A mind like compost.
I hold the most archaic values on earth ... the fertility of the soul, the magic of the animals, the power-vision in solitude.... the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe.
The other side of the "sacred" is the sight of your beloved in the underworld, dripping with maggots.
Gary Snyder
Great Brown Bear is walking with us, Salmon swimming upstream with us, as we stroll a city street.
Gary Snyder
In the 40,000 year time scale we're all the same people. We're all equally primitive, give or take two or three thousand years here or a hundred years there.
How Poetry Comes to Me
It comes blundering over the
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light
Gary Snyder
What use, Milton, a silly story
Of our lost general parents,
eaters of fruit?
Gary Snyder
Around Jack (Kerouac) there circulated a palpable aura of fame and death.
 there circulated a palpable aura of fame and death. )
