Danger on Peaks FROM THE PUBLISHER
When Gary Snyder applied for the position of fire lookout for the U.S. Forest Service in Washington State in 1952 he wrote in his letter, "So I would like your highest, most remote, and most difficult-of-access lookout." He got the job and was sent to Crater Mountain Lookout, the most remote outpost in Washington. But this wasn't his first encounter with dangerous peaks. This book, Snyder's first collection of new poems in twenty years, begins with poems about an earlier climb -- Snyder's first ascent of Mount St. Helens in 1945. He learned of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the morning of his descent, from newspapers delivered to forestry offices on the slopes of the mountain. Climbing, mountain and backwoods encounters begun in those early years of his life set the tone and provided much of the substance for what has followed in the remarkable life of one of America's most revered poets.
Danger on Peaks contains work in a surprising variety of styles, creating an arc-shaped trail from those earliest climbs to what the poet calls poems "of intimate immediate life, gossip and insight" (some of the poet's most personal work ever). Included are poems that work with the magical lyrics of Old Man Coyote and poems in an American / Japanese hybrid, a form of haibun, "haiku plus prose," which will remind readers as much of William Carlos Williams as Basho. The book ends with poems for the Buddhas of Bamiyan Valley, which were blown up by the Taliban, and the World Trade Towers. Danger on Peaks is a constructed work where every part contributes to the whole. Snyder writes, "We're loose on earth / half a million years / our weird blast spreading --"
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
In his first gathering of new poetry since the 1996 book-length poem Mountains and Rivers Without End, Snyder seeks a kind of fraught peace, which he cannot sustain; the book begins and ends in upheaval. A mostly prose sequence recalls the recent history of Mount Saint Helens, the Washington State volcano whose eruption in 1980 has been recently (and for now, more softly) reprised. Snyder's speaker remembers climbing it decades ago and sees how flora and fauna are already returning there now: "Who wouldn't take the chance to climb a snowpeak and get the long view?" Landscape, geology, botany and ecology; the poet's Buddhist outlook and its consequences for ethics, and the small pleasures of daily existence, inform the understated, short poems making up most of the volume. Snyder excels in adapting Japanese forms, such as haibun, to American usage. Many of his short poems recall the people-friends, lovers, a daughter-for whom Snyder cares or has cared, an attractive surprise in a poet known more for his rapport with nonhuman nature. Last come five short poems prompted by world events, including the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in spring 2001 and the terrorist attacks later that year: Snyder reminds us that humans are animals too, "beings, living or not," "inside or outside of time." (Oct.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
While Snyder's first collection of new poetry in over 20 years is long overdue, it's unlikely this book will garner any prizes. As Snyder himself admits, "most of my work/ such as it is/ is done." This, then, is a book about the past-celebrating and mourning at the same time. A portrait of the poet chopping a fallen tree so his 87-year-old mother can get her car out is one of his most memorable poems, but the majority are bleaker and less tender. The world, as Snyder depicted it so beautifully yet sparsely in his almost Utopian early work, has not lived up to its promise, yet his trademark koanlike style has not shifted to accommodate this landscape of Denny's, McDonald's, and laser printers. Visiting Mount St. Helen's after the volcano erupted, he recalls hiking there years ago, but the voice in the prose poem meditation remains static, giving little indication of a changed, hostile landscape. The Taliban's destruction of ancient Buddhas provokes deeper thought than the Taliban's role in the World Trade Center disaster. Despite these reservations, any new work by Snyder is a crucial library purchase.-Rochelle Ratner, formerly with SoHo Weekly News, New York Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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