Crowded by Beauty; A Biography of Poet and Zen Teacher Philip Whalen, by David Schneider, forthcoming from University of California Press.

If you're a fan of Philip Whalen and Gary Snyder, take a look at this pdf file: http://www.coyotesjournal.com/uploads/Kalyanamitra.pdf It is generously put online by Coyote's Journal.

Happy Birthday, Gary Snyder « Being Poetry

Happy Birthday, Gary Snyder « Being Poetry

A quote from Gary Snyder:

“As a poet, I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the late Paleolithic: the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth; the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.”~ from A Controversy of Poets and quoted in the above article.

Gary Snyder returns Home

Gary Snyder has long been a favourite poet of mine, so this article was a pleasure for me to read. I've seen a similar change in places of my youth, as no doubt most of us have who have lived some decades.

Here's just one quote from Poet Gary Snyder returns to Seattle at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2009265979_snyder27m.html

"Long before he grew into one of America's most famous Beat poets and was immortalized as Japhy Ryder, the fictional hero in Jack Kerouac's "The Dharma Bums," before he put down roots in California and crisscrossed the Pacific, over and over, to study Buddhism in Japan, Snyder grew up here, living with his parents on a subsistence farm.

"He helped tend the chickens in a two-story barn and milk the family's cows. His father planted the apple tree that can still be seen out back, and some of the fir trees stand even taller than before. But mostly, the woods he remembers are long gone, and the animals with them replaced today by concrete garden statuary rabbits snugged into the closely clipped landscaping that surrounds the house today."

Gary Snyder wins Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize

CHICAGO, April 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --- Poet Gary Snyder is the winner of the 2008 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Established in 1986 and presented annually by the Poetry Foundation, the award is one of the most prestigious given to American poets, and at $100,000 it is one of the nation's largest literary awards. Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry magazine and chair of the selection committee, made the announcement today. The prize will be presented at an evening ceremony at the Arts Club of Chicago on Thursday, May 29.

In announcing the award, Wiman said: "Gary Snyder is in essence a contemporary devotional poet, though he is not devoted to any one god or way of being so much as to Being itself. His poetry is a testament to the sacredness of the natural world and our relation to it, and a prophecy of what we stand to lose if we forget that relation."