Gary Snyder This Present Moment Review
By William Nesbitt
With his last book of poetry having arrived in
2005, Snyder’s latest collection demonstrates a
steady, unhurried, concentrated mind. If every
initial poem in a poetry book is a key or introduction to the rest of the poems, “Gnarly” sets us up
for the themes of severance to follow. The poem
discusses the splitting of wood with images such
as “Splitting 18″ long rounds from a beetle-kill /
pine tree we felled.” In the tenth line, the narrator
abruptly shifts focus and says, “my woman / she
was sweet.” The key word is was indicating a lost,
former state of being. “Anger, Cattle, and Achilles” details two of the speaker’s “best friends” that
“quit speaking” and have split apart like the dead
pine of “Gnarly.” One of the friends encourages
Snyder to “‘listen to that music’” because “‘the
self we hold so dear will soon be gone.’” “How
to Know Birds” reminds me us that a name is
just a superficial label, shorthand for “The place
you’re in / The time of year.” “How they move
and where,” social behavior, “Size, speed, sorts
of flight,” “quirks,” “calls and songs,” “colors, /
details of plumage”—all of “That will tell you the
details you need to come up with a name.” The
irony is that if you have all of this information,
then “you already know this bird” to a depth
beyond words and no longer have any need for
the name. In “Fixing the System” the narrator
works on a “leaky gate-valve” and realizes that
“every valve / leaks a little” and “there is no /
stopping the flow,” no fixing things completely,
no preventing loss. There is no reason to stop
trying, but we must always realize that this world,
and all systems within it, will always be imperfect—this “flow” is the natural order of all things.
“The Shrine at Delphi” details Snyder’s memories
of a night in Kyoto “where one night I dreamed
of you / forty years ago.” This leads to another
remembrance of “eight years even further back /
to an apple orchard, / us making love in the shadow of leaves / curled up together, happy, green.”
Snyder reflects that “I knew even then / I’d never
quite feel like that / with anyone, / ever again.”
In the ancient Greek world, Delphi was a place
for oracles. Snyder’s recollections foreshadow the
immensity of Carole Koda’s life and death (the
“sweet woman” “Gnarly” references).
Giving the destabilization of the traditional,
physical print format, a few thoughts about the
book, a review of the physical book may be in
order. The cloth edition is luscious with its deep
green like the green of a bushy plant or algae on
an old river stone. The cover art, “Glacial Erratic,
Tuolumne Meadows” by Tom Killion from his
High Sierra series shows a field of snow, with a
few trees, no one around, and what appears to be
a jagged tree stump. The style is reminiscent of
traditional Japanese woodcut prints. The front
cover both connects and contrasts well with the
back cover, a black and white photograph of a
blooming tree framing a solitary Snyder wearing
several cloth shirts as if he is going to finish some
outdoor work as soon as the photographer finishes. In a way, the two covers—the black and
white, the coldness evoked in both pictures, the
lone stump of a tree—prepare us for the final two
poems.
“GO NOW” is a stark poem “about death and
the / death of a lover,” Snyder’s wife, Carole Koda.
While the rest of the poems are classic Snyder,
this poem is the gem. There is no romantic glorification or smoothing out of death and the process
of dying. Instead, we read descriptions of just
what is: “how the eyes / sink back and the teeth
stand out.” Observing her body after a couple of
days, his “sweet lady’s body / down to essentials”
the poem limits itself to the essentials in just three
and one-third pages. The only consolation Snyder allows himself is the realization that although
going through the pain of someone dying “is the
price of attachment,” that the pain is “‘Worth
it. Easily worth it.’” The final poem, white print