Review by Booklist Review
Snyder's first all-new collection since Axe Handles 0 (1983) takes its title from the last line of a little poem about first seeing Carole, now his wife. It reveals one appetite flaring, ever so subtly, in the mundane precincts of another: he's dishing out a meal, she's receiving it, and he glimpses "her lithe leg," obviously "trained by . . . danger on peaks." This sort of thing happens all the time, of course, but how often is it this well captured? In these poems of his sixties and early seventies, Snyder often works such magic, in poems as compact as those of the Japanese masters he has long studied and in prose-and-verse pieces as crystalline as those in the famous travel books of Basho. From the opening prose-and-verse section on several climbs of Mount St. Helens, through short poems of observation and longer ones on daily life, to more prose-and-verse pieces on journeys near and far, Snyder seems more accepting than ever before. His 1960s eco-Marxist scolding is gone, and he's the wiser for it. --Ray Olson Copyright 2004 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In his first gathering of new poetry since the 1996 book-length poem Mountains and Rivers Without End, Snyder seeks a kind of fraught peace, which he cannot sustain; the book begins and ends in upheaval. A mostly prose sequence recalls the recent history of Mount Saint Helens, the Washington State volcano whose eruption in 1980 has been recently (and for now, more softly) reprised. Snyder's speaker remembers climbing it decades ago and sees how flora and fauna are already returning there now: "Who wouldn't take the chance to climb a snowpeak and get the long view?" Landscape, geology, botany and ecology; the poet's Buddhist outlook and its consequences for ethics, and the small pleasures of daily existence, inform the understated, short poems making up most of the volume. Snyder excels in adapting Japanese forms, such as haibun, to American usage. Many of his short poems recall the people-friends, lovers, a daughter-for whom Snyder cares or has cared, an attractive surprise in a poet known more for his rapport with nonhuman nature. Last come five short poems prompted by world events, including the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in spring 2001 and the terrorist attacks later that year: Snyder reminds us that humans are animals too, "beings, living or not," "inside or outside of time." (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
While Snyder's first collection of new poetry in over 20 years is long overdue, it's unlikely this book will garner any prizes. As Snyder himself admits, "most of my work/ such as it is/ is done." This, then, is a book about the past-celebrating and mourning at the same time. A portrait of the poet chopping a fallen tree so his 87-year-old mother can get her car out is one of his most memorable poems, but the majority are bleaker and less tender. The world, as Snyder depicted it so beautifully yet sparsely in his almost Utopian early work, has not lived up to its promise, yet his trademark koanlike style has not shifted to accommodate this landscape of Denny's, McDonald's, and laser printers. Visiting Mount St. Helen's after the volcano erupted, he recalls hiking there years ago, but the voice in the prose poem meditation remains static, giving little indication of a changed, hostile landscape. The Taliban's destruction of ancient Buddhas provokes deeper thought than the Taliban's role in the World Trade Center disaster. Despite these reservations, any new work by Snyder is a crucial library purchase.-Rochelle Ratner, formerly with SoHo Weekly News, New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
