Cold Mountain Poems

by Gary Snyder

In 1953, Gary Snyder returned to the Bay Area and, at age 23, enrolled in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, to study Asian languages and culture. He intensified his study of Chinese and Japanese, and taking up the challenge of one of his professors, Chen Shih–hsiang, he began to work on translating a largely unknown poet by the name of Han Shan, a writer with whom the professor thought Snyder might feel a special affinity. The results were magical. As Patrick Murphy noted, "These poems are something more than translations precisely because Snyder renders them as a melding of Han Shan's Chinese Ch'an Buddhist mountain spirit trickster mentality and Snyder's own mountain wilderness meditation and labor activities." The suite of 24 poems was published in the 1958 issue of The Evergreen Review, and the career of one of America's greatest poets was launched. In 1972, Press–22 issued a beautiful edition of these poems written out by hand in italic by Michael McPherson. We are doing a new augments edition based on the old, with a new design, a preface by Lu Ch'iu–yin, and an afterword by Mr. Snyder where he discusses how he came to this work and what it meant to his development as a writer and Buddhist.On May 11, 2012, for the Stronach Memorial Lecture at The University of California, more than fifty years after his days there as a student, Snyder offered a public lecture reflecting on Chinese poetry, Han Shan, and his continuing work as a poet and Translated by. This remarkable occasion was recorded and we are including a CD of it in our edition, making this the most definitive edition of Cold Mountain Poems ever published.

Genres: Poetry, China, Buddhism, Nature

75 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

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

[Kevin Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ultimately, I’m a sucker for this stuff. But even I found this edition nice, but largely unnecessary for all but the most die-hard Gary Snyder or Han-shan fans.

This is a nice, illustrated edition of the 24 Han-shan poems that Gary Snyder translated as a school assignment back when he was a graduate student at UC Berkeley in the 1950s. As something of a mountain man himself, Snyder has a real feeling for the imagery and sense of solace in nature that’s present in the poems. He also captures the colloquial language and straightforward prosody that separated Han-shan from his Tang Dynasty contemporaries. Snyder’s versions are my favorite English translations of these poems because Snyder interiorized them and spit them back out as Gary Snyder poems, or at least as poems with his same lyrical and spiritual view of nature.

However, considering the poems themselves are available as part of Counterpoint Press' less expensive, but still nicely designed, 50th anniversary edition of Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems from a couple years ago (and in various paperback editions before that), what you're really paying for here is the presentation. This is really a gift book for Gary Snyder fans and Han-shan fans. But as such, it’s nowhere near as impressive or gorgeous as the Gary Snyder and Tom Killion collaborations, for example.

The main draw is the hand-lettered calligraphy, done in a simple but elegant Japanese and Chinese-inspired style by then-recent Reed College alum Michael McPherson. The lettering is nicely done, especially since he did it all in one day after apparently (if I understand it right from the afterword) taking only one class in calligraphy. All in all, not bad. But I’ve seen more impressive lettering skills on display in a Superman comic. (Which is not a knock, by the way. Certain comic book letterers are among the best artists in comics).

My point is that McPherson was clearly a neophyte, albeit a talented one, when he did this back in the ’70s, as was Snyder when he translated these poems back in the ’50s. This gives the whole project a feel similar to, say, an early R.E.M. EP getting the deluxe re-issue treatment. It’s a little rough around the edges, but in a heartfelt and likeable way. Trying to make it slick, however, doesn’t necessarily jibe with the original spirit of the thing.

This is essentially a reprint of Press-22’s popular but limited early ’70s edition with some extra bells and whistles. Austere black and white line art is “freely adapted,” whatever that means, from a 1950s book on Chinese painting techniques called “The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting.” Extras also include: Snyder’s translation of the “Preface to the Poems of Han-shan” by Lu Ch’iu-yin (which relates the legend of this mysterious poet); new afterwords from both McPherson and Snyder; and a CD recording of Snyder’s hour-long 2012 UC Berkeley lecture entitled, “Cold Mountain: The Life of Creative Translation.”

[aida · Rating 5 out of 5]

magnificent

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection consists of twenty-four of the three-hundred-plus surviving poems by the Tang-era poet-hermit who went by the name “Cold Mountain” [i.e. Han-Shan.] This translation was produced by the Beat poet, Gary Snyder, and both the translation and the selection are informed by Snyder’s sensibilities and worldview. Snyder is known for nature-centric poetry infused with Buddhist and Native American sentiments, but, like other Beats (though far less than, say, Allen Ginsberg,) Snyder sometimes engages in social commentary. This makes Han-Shan’s body of work a fertile field because it, too, focuses heavily on the beauty and harshness of nature, is framed by Buddhist and Taoist perspectives, and occasionally interjects a societal rebuke. The poems are mostly octave (eight-line) poems which often follow the format of a “straight” sestet that sets up a “punchline” in the last couplet. [Not to suggest the poems are jokes, but they often present a clever twist or commentary at the end.]

Han-Shan’s poems focus heavily on his life as a hermit and the dichotomy of Cold Mountain (the locale) as both a harsh place to live and the only place for him. The Snyder selection focuses heavily on the appeal of nature and the living of a simple and natural life -- as well as on the shunning of materialism.

Han-Shan is a mysterious figure, but what is known of him is intriguing. He is considered a mad saint by some, though most of what is known about the man comes from his surviving poems. (Some believe that the 313 known poems maybe only about half of what the hermit composed during the course of his life.)

Even if you’ve read one of the full collections (e.g. Red Pine’s,) you may find some unique insight and imagery in Snyder’s select translation. I’d highly recommend it.

[James Tyler Carpenter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nowhere else but here

It is a treat and a blessing to go looking for a place and to indisputably there is no where to go but where you are. Gary Snyder’s Cold Mountain Poems is not a travelogue, like Robert Frost’s inaugural “Into My Own”, to read the poems and translation, is to know there is no where to go and there never was. That’s a simple gift for everyone who picks up this me elous volume.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gary Snyder never fails to astonish me. A more thorough review is in the works.

[Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Library book. These poems were beautiful. There were only 24 of them so I feel like I zoomed through them too fast. I may have to reread this.

[Dan Burt · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

[tartaruga fechada · Rating 5 out of 5]

Manufactured Trilogies #30: Enter the Snyderverse
- Earth House Hold (Snyder)
- The Dharma Bums (Kerouac)
- Cold Mountain Poems (Han Shan, Trans. Snyder)

[Sue]

This is a gorgeous new edition, beautifully illustrated & read via the accompanying cd by Gary Snyder. A wonderful addition to my collection of Cold Mountain.

[Eya Rziga · Rating 4 out of 5]

<3 peaceful

[Crystal Portugal]

Beautiful