Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder, born in 1930, American poet, essayist, and translator of Japanese poetry, whose writing is marked by his interests in ecology, Native American myths and culture, Asian literature and philosophy, and Zen, a school of Buddhism. Snyder’s collection of poetry Turtle Island (1974) won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Born in San Francisco, California, Snyder spent his early years on small farms in Washington and Oregon. After earning his B.A. degree in English and anthropology from Reed College in 1951, Snyder studied Asian languages at the University of California at Berkeley from 1953 to 1956. Throughout his years at both Reed and Berkeley, Snyder also worked variously as a logger, carpenter, seaman, forester, and fire lookout, and many of his experiences in these jobs appear in his later poetry. While at Berkeley he became friends with American writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and through them he became associated with other writers of the Beat Generation. From 1956 to 1968 Snyder lived mainly in Kyōto, Japan, where he studied Zen in a Japanese monastery. He then returned to the United States, and in 1986 he became a professor at the University of California at Davis.

Snyder’s most enduring concerns, evident in his first collection of poems, Riprap (1959), have been the destructive influence of American society on the natural environment, and the possibilities for improving this relationship through people’s attitudes and actions. His 1967 collection The Back Country reveals the influences of both Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. While praised for his progressive politics, Snyder has been criticized for what some people see as a tendency to lecture.

Snyder’s other books of poetry include Myths and Texts (1960), Regarding Wave (1969), Axe Handles (1983), and Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996). Practice of the Wild (1990) and A Place in Space (1995) are both collections of essays discussing Snyder’s thoughts on ecology.