The Impermanence of Everything… Including Words

April 27, 2005

So the Star Tribune did a decent piece on Gary Snyder a week before his appearance in St. Paul. The big pull quote that flagged the story on the front page of the “Variety” section was

“Wilderness is not, as Thoreau said, ‘the preservation of the world.’ It Is the World.”

Just a few days ago, the Star Tribune ran a correction.

Poet Gary Snyder was incorrectly quoted on Page E1 on April 3. He wrote, “Wildness is not just the ‘preservation of the world,’ it is the world.”

I can see how it happened. The reporter wrote something down about Thoreau, wrote down this quote, didn’t understand the distinction between “wildness” and “wilderness” from the perspective of Gary Snyder, etc.

Seems like a good time to post a few of the better quotes from the story:

“I started writing poems after I started climbing mountains, when I was 15. Mountains that require you to get up at 3 in the morning to get your ropes and crampons and axes together. … It was tremendously powerful, climbing my first snow peaks, and that drove me to find a way to express the experience in words.”

“It got me thinking about the concept of ‘disturbance’ on a grand scale,” he said. The book crystallized in the events leading up to 9/11, Snyder said. “It got me seeing everything in that light, about the extraordinary things that happen occasionally in nature and in history that highlight the nature of all beings, sentient and non-sentient, that all is impermanent; everything is subject to change. That is a central tenet of Buddhism I have never stopped meditating on.”

“We have to recognize those situations where we can have an effect, and take action. And also those things we cannot have an effect on,” he said. “That is the lesson of impermanence. It turns the problem back on ourselves.”

Snyder leaned back on the couch, closed his eyes, and recited a famous haiku by Kobayashi Issa, who wrote in Japan about 200 years ago. “Tsuyu no ya wa/ tsuyu no yo nagara/ sarinagara.” Then he translated: “This dewdrop world/ is but a dewdrop world/ and yet…”

“If you gloss the poem, it means, ‘This impermanent world is just an impermanent world, and yet. … ‘ That ‘and yet’ is what people do. They try to leave something behind. They take care of their children. They make art! And that makes life hugely interesting.”

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2 Comments

  1. Dave says:
    Saturday, April 30, 2005 at 9:22 am

    Snyder told me in a workshop once: Get local. Understand your area, your watershed, AND FOR GODS SAKE STAY PUT!

  2. the dharma bum says:
    Monday, May 02, 2005 at 9:18 am

    Dave,
    I’m not sure if your comments were kind of addressing the discussion I was having with a couple people in this thread, but it seems like they might have.

    Thanks for the insight. I don’t know if it’s a simple matter of just staying put, as lene and hipchickmamma artfully discussed in that thread. I believe Snyder once said something to the effect of “the duty of the poet is to give voice to his or her place.” for a long time, I’ve struggled with whether or not he meant “home” or just “place.” I’m pretty sure he would have said ‘home’ if that’s what he meant. He said place. I think anyone who gives voice to their place in the world, whether or not they were born there or not, is doing that work. And then there’s the question of the boundaries of your place, again discussed in that thread… Didn’t Kerouac give voice to his place? Which was America, from sea to shining sea. Obviously, Snyder has promoted the idea of bioregionalism and watershed politics for most of his life, very poetically and effectively defining the boundaries of a place by the boundaries of its ecosystem.

    I could ramble on about all this, but just curious what you think about all this with your first-hand experience with Snyder.

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