From early on, after seeing Chinese scroll paintings in the
museum in Seattle, Snyder adopted a linear continuity of narrative, with
everything happening at once: the pilgrim with his staff on the mountain, the
bridge over the stream, the forest and the ocean. Diary fragments, named
persons, conversations in roadside cafés, bars, truckstops, prayers, chants,
native shamanic lore, myths of place: they all enjoyed an equal status and
emphasis. The delivery was crafted to move like natural speech, with a
leavening of slow-burn humour. This was a country-smart poetry, beautifully
balanced between frontier transcendentalism and the long gaze of Asia.
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