Axe Handles: Poems

by Gary Snyder

In Axe Handles Mr. Snyder reveals the roots of community in the family and explores the transmission of cultural values and knowledge.
"In making the handle of an axe by cutting wood with an axe the model is indeed near at hand." In exploring this axiom of Lu Ji’s, Gary Snyder

I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft of culture,
How we go on.

This is a collection of discovery, of insight, and of vision. These poems see the roots of community in the family, and the roots of culture and government in the community.
Formally, the 71 poems in Axe Handles range from lyrics to riddles to narratives. The collection is divided into three parts, called "Loops," "Little Songs for Gaia," and "Nets," each containing poems of disciplined clarity. Gary Snyder knows well the great power of silence in a poem, silence that allows the mind space enough to discover the magic of song.

Genres: Poetry, Buddhism, Ecology, American

126 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

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

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the first time in memory
heavy rain in August
tuning up the chainsaw
begin to cut oak
Boletus by the dozen
fruiting in the woods
Full moon, warm nights
the boys learn to float
Masa gone off dancing
for another thirty days
Queen Anne's Lace in the meadow
a Flicker's single call

Oregano, lavender, the salvia sage
wild pennyroyal
from the Yuba River bank
All in the family
of Mint.

[Karlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Snyder casts his poetic net across moments, minute yet expansive, brilliant with humanity among the world of Mother Nature all around us and the sweat of logging, the quietness of small-holding or a mountain hike and the zen on a lake.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

"When making an axe handle, the pattern is not far off." Fathers and sons, poets and other poets. I saw Gary Snyder yesterday at the Central Library in LA, speaking on the poet Lew Welch, who, with Phillip Whalen, had been his roommate at Reed College in 1951. Imagine that dorm room! He read some of his own poems and some of Welch's, whom I've not read, but now intend to. Snyder and Ferlinghetti are the last living beats--and Snyder is the one I've become most attached to in the last several years. Reread the Dharma Bums... he's the most admirable character, and in life too. He's 81 now, and still clear and sturdy and modest.. This is a beautiful book and the poem 'Axe Handles' I even have as a broadside, I love it so much. Now to try Welch!

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my kind of poetry, and one of the best Gary Snyder books I've read. It's low key and readable, but also deep. I especially liked the poem "Soy Sauce," a charming story about helping his friends do some work on their house, and discovering that the wood they're using came from an old soy sauce factory... the smell of the wood sparks a memory of one of Gary's trips to Japan in his youth.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Snyder at his best, in his essence.

[Bean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible and full of clarity as always with Gary Snyder.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

By Axe Handles, Snyder had settled into a comfortable voice tracking perceptions and community responding to a changing world. On this read, I was attracted to the "Nets", series of poems that triangulate memory and the current moment in a welcoming invitation to Buddhist flow. Nothing that hasn't been present in Turtle Island or Riprap, but a welcome step on a shared journey.

[Adam Ferrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

We don't deserve Gary Snyder, a poet who often leaves me in a state that transcends speech, something close to giddiness. He adorns basic language with extravagant meaning, weighing raccoons breaking into trash cans against the march of human progress, for example, or refreshing Bashō's "Old Pond" haiku with the perspective of a nearby water bug.
This is the special frequency Snyder taps into, of the ordinary and sublime, that feels connected to our senses, memories, and meanings. Not every poem is a masterpiece but here's a gem short enough for me to copy:

Removing the Plate of the Pump
on the Hydraulic System
of the Backhoe

Through mud, fouled nuts, black grime
it opens, a gleam of spotless steel
machined-fit perfect
swirl of intake and output
relentless clarity
at the heart
of work.

He takes the reader from temples in Kyoto to bars in Alaska, with stops at gubernatorial mansions and musty fox dens and museums in Stockholm. My feet can't follow his, but I can absorb his experiences in Axe Handles: Poems and I'm thankful for it. 5/5 stars.

[Victoria & David Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have long admired Gary Snyder's literary output. His poetry, his essays, his eco warrior stance while inhabiting both academia and homestead. His eastern aesthetic. And yet this collection, except for the title poem, just didn't speak to me. Perhaps it was his following Pound's dictum to eliminate all extraneous, perhaps it is too much Zen 'place'. Perhaps I've been reading too much Mary Oliver and am looking for more 'flow'.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always love Gary Snyder. I found the title poem of this collection particularly lovely, but the whole thing was a wide-ranging exploration of the natural world, mirroring Snyder's own travels during the time he was writing the poems, as well as a journey through parenthood and aging. Always a delight.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

It comforts me to know that Gary Snyder is there. The headspace is perfect.

But I know how it tastes
to lick those window frames
in the dark,
the deer.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not As beautiful as I would have hoped

[Diane B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerful imagery can evoke a deeper experience. These poems helped me glimpse at how the present can embody present, past and future.

[Matt Hefley]

Clarity

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simple poems saying profound things. Pretty dang beautiful.

[Tôpher Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

Undoubtedly the best of the beat poets, Snyder has a lean, well honed, cosmopolitan style that is such an easy an enjoyable read. Why hasn’t he won the Nobel prize?

[Derek Warnick · Rating 5 out of 5]

these beer commercials
with huge mountains and cool streams
sham Snyder poems

[Kitap Yakıcı · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came to Axe Handles by Gary Snyder expecting something like distilled wisdom—old ways, direct experience, poetry as practice. And that’s in here. But it’s not always as immediately legible or cohesive as I wanted it to be.

What it’s trying to do:

This isn’t a collection aiming for lyrical polish or emotional sweep. It’s doing something quieter and more deliberate: documenting a life lived in attention—to craft, to lineage, to nature, to transmission. These poems feel less like “expressions” and more like notations from someone embedded in a way of being.

The famous image—learning to shape an axe handle using an existing axe handle as a guide—pretty much tells you the whole project. Knowledge passed hand to hand. Form shaping form. Culture as something practiced, not theorized.

Where it works:

At its best, the simplicity cuts clean. There are moments where Snyder’s restraint pays off, and a few lines carry a surprising amount of weight. You feel the continuity he’s pointing to—human skill, ecological awareness, lived knowledge that doesn’t need to announce itself.

There’s also an honesty here that I respect. Nothing feels inflated. No reaching for profundity. When it lands, it lands because it’s actually grounded.

Where it struggles:

But that same restraint can flatten things. A lot of the collection reads more like journal entries or field notes than poems that fully open up. The signal is there, but the voltage is low. Instead of “this reveals something,” it’s often “this gestures toward something.”

And while I respect the transmission model—learning by doing, by observing, by inheriting—it doesn’t always translate into a compelling reading experience. The poems sometimes feel more valuable as artifacts of a life than as standalone works.

Final orientation:

This is less a book you read for impact and more one you read for alignment. It’s for people already interested in craft, lineage, and the idea that meaning is carried through practice rather than abstraction.

But if you’re looking for poetry that hits you in the gut or rearranges your interior, this isn’t really operating on that frequency.

Three stars. Thoughtful, grounded, and occasionally sharp—but often more like a record of wisdom than an experience of it.

[Mark Valentine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Snyder's poems have a sparse fragmentation that makes his images seem cerebral even though he describes scenes. This makes the reading difficult if continuity is important but impressive if impressionism is more important. Of all the poems, there were only two that I thought brilliant and to read the entire book to find them does not bother me at all.

[graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Gary Snyder; I like his aesthetic and his simple imagery--it's something I'd like to learn to do better, more narrative-style writing. And while I really resonated with some of his poems, a lot of them just weren't my thing. Oh well.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle island,
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

[D.A. Lockhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely adored this collection.