long shadows
phone photo of Gary Snyder walking in Battery Park City, River Terrace, near Poets House
This week at at Poets House NYC – Gary Snyder! who gave a reading both charming and profound, filled with stories and general lightheartedness, lore, and wisdom.
With regard to his introduction as being a great one for walking:
“You should hear about my driving…. Don’t forget about your tools and your automobile repairs and your oil changes in the midst of all your walking.”
With regard to getting scolded for using the description “East Coast thinking”:
“Sometimes you have to say that… it’s not criticism, it’s anthropology.”
Italian saying:
“An angry person cannot catch a fish.”
On Ezra Pound’s dictum to Make it new!:
“I’d just as soon Make It Old.”
On being asked how he maintains such an optimistic attitude:
“I’m not optimistic, I’m just good-natured.”
Mantra for a frustrating day:
“I try to remember machinery can always be fixed.”
Rhyming couplet at the end of a poem:
“Don’t need much light
for stories in the night.”
Also featured, a discussion with Jonathan Skinner of ecopoetics fame. Some remarks were made about metaphor – that Gary’s poems are low on metaphor. Gary claims that he doesn’t consciously avoid metaphor. I felt the cold smell of a deeper, more ancient practice of metaphor enter the room.