Folger Poetry Board Reading: Gary Snyder (2012)

For the [O.B. Hardison Poetry Series] 2012's Folger Poetry Board Reading, Gary Snyder read from his work in the Folger's [Elizabethan Theatre] on May 14, 2012.

Gary Snyder

About his work Gary Snyder has said, “I try to hold both history and wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things …” Snyder has published 16 books of poetry and prose, including No Nature: New and Selected Poems, which was a finalist for the National Book Award; Axe Handles, for which he received an American Book Award; and Turtle Island, which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Other honors and awards for his writing include an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Bollingen Prize, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Times, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the Ruth Lilly Award. Snyder was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2003. He is a professor of English at the University of California, Davis.

Excerpts

From "Piute Creek"

…. night air still and the rocks

Warm. Sky over endless mountains.

All the junk that goes with being human

Drops away, hard rock wavers

Even the heavy present seems to fail

This bubble of a heart.

Words and books

Like a small creek off a high ledge

Gone in the dry air