Review by Choice Review
This indispensable volume offers the largest selection ever of an important American poet. It represents every collection of Snyder's poetry and adds 15 new poems. Most of the omitted poems are minor and will not be missed. However, it is hard to accept the deletion of poems from Snyder's major work, Myths & Texts; the integrity of the sequence has been tested by repeated critical scrutiny. The long work-in-progress, Mountains and Rivers Without End is represented by two selections, "Bubbs Creek Haircut," one of the best, and "Blue Sky," one of the most obscure and doctrinaire. The new poems are a mixed group. Some deal with old themes like bear lore, the sweat bath, and celebrations of nature; others have an elegiac tone that reminds us that Snyder is 60 and can look back on a long and distinguished career. It is good to have a generous selection of the products of that career available in one volume. B. Almon; University of Alberta
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
The best of the Beats, both Ezra Pound's and W. C. Williams' most successful disciple, the first wholly convincing East Asian American poet, naturalist-poet supreme--it's possible to think of Gary Snyder as all of these. Beside and beyond them all, he's one of the few poets of any era who have taken their own lives as the basis of all their poetry and made their lives' particulars resonate universally. Farm boy, forest ranger, merchant mariner, Buddhist monk in Japan, practical ecologist and proponent of bioregionalism, man of letters, lover, husband, father--he has led a life that seems ideal to a large proportion of educated and progressive Americans, doubly ideal because Snyder exudes not a trace of class exclusiveness. It's nearly impossible to visualize him in anything fancier than a blue chambray workshirt. His poetry is one of direct speech that concentrates on the matter at hand but is also real speech that often proceeds in phrases rather than clauses because Snyder makes you nearly physically present at the poem's place, so he doesn't need to make all the connections: you can see them. And of all the myriad free-verse poets, he's been the most musical with the least flash, as if he were some spontaneous Shaker bard reborn as a multicultured songster of the Pacific rim. 'Tis his gift to be simple--and global. ~--Ray Olson
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This first selected edition of Snyder's poetry offers an overview of a career spanning more than 30 years, from his emergence as a poet of the Beat Generation to his eventual focus on nature and environmentalism. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
No Nature is a magnificent selection of the best of Snyder's career, spanning from Riprap (1959), published at the time of his involvement with the Beatniks and the San Francisco Renaissance, to a previously unpublished group of sixteen poems entitled ``No Nature.'' Snyder's meditative style, unpretentious language, and graceful use of humor derive from his dominant influences: Zen poetry and the myths of the native peoples living along the Northwest Coast. Now the foothills of the Sierras offer refuge as he has grown older and ``smarter,'' having escaped the stuffiness of ``academies packed with scholars.'' Every poem is accessible and passionate because Snyder is ``still in love'' with the ocean, the mountains, bears, and trees. No Nature is a landmark, one of those absolutely essential books that belongs in all poetry collections. Highly recommended.-- Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Decatur, Ill. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
