The Hammock Papers: Happy Birthday, Snyder.

08 May 2012

Happy Birthday, Snyder.

Poet Gary Snyder was born on this date in 1930.

Some points for a "New Nature Poetics"

That it be literate -- that is, nature literate. Know who's who and what's what in the ecosystem, even if this aspect is barely visible in the writing.

That it be grounded in a place -- thus, place literate: informed about local specifics on both ecological-biotic and sociopolitical levels. And informed about history (social history and environmental history), even if this is not obvious in the poem.

That it use Coyote as a totem -- the trickster, always open, shape shifting, providing the eye of other beings going in and out of death, laughing with the dark side.

That it use Bear as a totem -- omnivorous, fearless, without anxiety, steady, generous, contemplative, and relentlessly protective of the wild.

That it find further totems -- this is the world of nature, myth, archetype, and ecosystem that we mush each investigate. "Depth ecology."

That it fear not science. Go beyond nature literacy into the emergent ne territories in science: landscape ecology, conservation biology, charming chaos, complicated systems theory.

That it go further with science -- into awareness of the problematic and contigent aspects of so-called objectivity.

That it study mind and language -- language as a wild system, mind as wild habitat, world as a "making" (poem), poem as a creature of the wild mind.

That it be crafty and get the work done.

- Gary Snyder

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL