Look Out: A Selection of Writings

by Gary Snyder

Personal favorites selected by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet himself. Beginning with the publication of The Back Country in 1968, Gary Snyder's long-cherished association with New Directions continued through the publication of his poetry books: the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling Turtle Island (1974), and Myths & Texts (1978), as well as his prose works, Earth House Hold (1969) and The Real Work (1980), all essential titles on the New Directions list. Snyder's No Nature: New and Selected Poems , a finalist for the National Book Award, was published in 1993 by Pantheon, and his long-anticipated epic poem Mountains and Rivers without End was published by Counterpoint in 1997. Snyder has had a seminal place among American landscape writers. "As a poet," he once wrote, "I hold the most archaic values on earth." He has long been associated with Beat writers such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and other poets such as Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan. His poetics are founded in Poundian modernism, Chinese and Japanese poetry, and ancient oral native traditions.

Look Out is a collection personally compiled by Gary Snyder for New Directions, containing poems and essays from all his New Directions books. It offers first-time readers a chance to see the evolution of his thought and poetry, spanning two decades, and old-time fans the opportunity to behold all the favorites, in a new Bibelot edition. Also included here is Snyder's Introduction, as well as a new poem written about the late New Directions founder James Laughlin.

Genres: Poetry, Essays, Nature

160 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2002

About the author

Gary Snyder is an American poet, essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. His early poetry has been associated with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance and he has been described as the "poet laureate of Deep Ecology". Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the American Book Award. His work, in his various roles, reflects an immersion in both Buddhist spirituality and nature. He has translated literature into English from ancient Chinese and modern Japanese. For many years, Snyder was an academic at the University of California, Davis, and for a time served as a member of the California Arts Council.

Reviews

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This little book was my first introduction to Gary Snyder beyond stumbling across a poem here or there in anthologies. I'd always been struck by his poetry so I thought I'd give this collection, selected by Snyder from his New Directions publications, a shot. I thought it was an interesting collection, bringing together poetry, essays, and entries from his journal kept while he worked as a lookout in a park (more engaging than expected!). I felt like the collection was worth reading simply for the "Craft Interview" from the New York Quarterly and the stunning poem The Hudson Curlew. The Craft Interview, in which Snyder describes his writing practice, is fascinating!

[Dan Gobble · Rating 5 out of 5]

Song of the Taste reminds me of Whitman:

Eating the living germs of grasses
Eating the ova of large birds

the freshly sweetness packed
around the sperm of swaying trees

The muscles of the flanks and thighs of
soft-voiced cows
the bounce in the lamb's leap
the swish in the ox's tail

Eating roots grown swoll
inside the soil

Drawing on life of living
clustered points of light spun
out of space
hidden in the grape.

Eating each other's seed
eating
ah, each other.

Kissing the lover in the mouth of bread
lip to lip.

(Gary Snyder, Look Out: A Selection of Writings, New York: New Directions Biblelot, 2002, p. 23.)

Another favorite from this collection:

For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

(Gary Snyder, Look Out: A Selection of Writings, New York: New Directions Biblelot, 2002, p. 47.)

August 9[, 1969] journal note:

"Discipline of self-restraint is an easy one; being clear-cut, negative, and usually based on some accepted cultural values. Discipline of following desires, always doing what you want to do, is hardest. It presupposes self-knowledge of motives, a careful balance of free action and sense of where the cultural taboos lay - knowing whether a particular "desire" is instinctive, cultural, personal, a product of thought, contemplation, or the unconscious."

(Gary Snyder, Look Out: A Selection of Writings, New York: New Directions Biblelot, 2002, p. 85.)

There's a great interview near the end of the book where the New York Quarterly discusses poetry writing technique with Synder (back in 1973).

[Jed · Rating 4 out of 5]

the truest voice of the beat generation.