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08  Gary Snyder was a very successful poet who was influenced a lot by nature. He was born in San Francisco in 1930. He grew up on small farms in Washington Oregon. His family was not very wealthy. Snyder's mother moved to Portland, Oregon to work as a newspaper woman when he was twelve. He was raised by his mother, a single parent. She insisted that he go downtown to Lincoln High, the most intellectually demanding school in the Portland system. He was very successful in school and went to college and did very well there (Magill).
 * Gary Snyder ** "Nature is not a place to visit, it is home."

After Snyder finished high school he went to Reed College. In 1947, he received a scholarship to Reed College. He earned undergraduate degrees in literature and anthropology. His first poems were published in the Reed College literary magazine. He also wrote for the //The Oregonian// newspaper at night and spent the summer of 1950 on an archeaological dig at old Fort Vancouver in Washington. Often, Snyder was considered as "supporting himself", during the summers of the years he was doing graduate work, he took a job as a fire-watcher in the Cascade mountains. His accomplished poems were related to these experiences and his work on a trail crew in Yosemite in 1955. He did a lot of things on his own and the poems he wrote were a success. His first book of poems, //Turtle Island//, related to his native country was published in 1974 and won the Pulitzer Prize. At the end of the decade, he published a collection called //The Real Work: Interviews and Talks//, 1964-1979 and in 1983 he published //Axe Handles//. In 1985 he joined the English department at the University of California at Davis. Gary Snyder's poems have an appreciation for the hard work of rural life and the nearness it affords with nature (Magill).

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In the blue night frost haze, the sky glows with the moon pine tree tops bend snow-blue, fade into sky, frost, starlight. The creak of boots. Rabbit tracks, deer tracks, what do we know.
 * Pine Tree Tops **

is the snow on Kurakake Mountain. fields and woods thawing, freezing, and thawing, totally untrustworthy. it's true, a great fuzzy windstorm like yeast up there today, still the only faint source of hope is the snow on Kurakake Mountain.
 * The Snow on Saddle Mountain **
 * ** The only thing that can be relied on

A lot of Gary Snyder's poems have to do with nature and hard work. //Pine Tree Tops// defines his work because it has to do with the outdoors. In this poem he talks about the night sky, the moon, pine trees, animal tracks, and snow. His poem, //The Snow on Saddle Mountain// also defines what his work is about. It talks about the outdoors, being in a windstorm on a mountain. Just from my own perspective on reading his poems I can tell that natures plays a big role in his inspiration to writing his poems. Buddhism and Japanese poetry and art also influenced many of his poems.

** ﻿Axe Handles ** One afternoon the last week in April Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet One-half turn and it sticks in a stump. He recalls the hatchet-head Without a handle, in the shop And go gets it, and wants it for his own. A broken-off axe handle behind the door Is long enough for a hatchet, We cut it to length and take it With the hatchet head And working hatchet, to the wood block. There I began to shape the old handle With the hatchet, and the phrase First learned from Ezra Pound Rings in my ears! "When making an axe handle the pattern is not far off." And I say this to Kai "Look: we will shape the handle By checking the handle Of the axe we cut with-" And he sees. And I hear it again: It's in Lu Ji's Wen Fu, fourth century A.D. "Essay on Literature"- in the Preface: "In making the handle Of an axe By cutting wood with an axe The model is indeed near at hand. - My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen Translated that and taught it years ago And I see: Pound was an axe, Chen was an axe, I am an axe And my son a handle, soon To be shaping again, model And tool, craft of culture, How we go on. ﻿Literary Critisim   The theme of "Axe Handles" is fatherhood, literary influence, the value of physical labor, nature of teaching and learning, growth of the self, and the relations between generations. "Axe Handles" is more narrative than most of Gary Snyder's poems. The first couple of lines are not very poetic but demonstrate precision and economy. The rythm of this poem startles the reader. Thematically it suggests teachers from many generations are instructing young Kai. "Axe Handles" represents a cultural ideal of continuity. Critics focus on different of the cultural model Snyder describes. They generally represent it as a model that always loops back to its beginings. This looping is linked to Snyder 's ecological focus on "biofeedback loops," as in ecosystems grow from their own constantly recycled materials. For Gary Snyder, healthy human communities need cultural feedback loops as much as healthy ecosystems require biofeedback loops. In an era where technology threatens the natural environment and humankind, "Axe Handles" is its own model for a sustainable future (Cone, Temple). ** Burning The Small Dead ** ﻿Burning the small dead   branches   broke from beneath   thick spreading   whitebark pine   a hundred summers   snowmelt rock and air   hiss in a twisted bough. seirra granite;  Mt. Ritter-   black rock twice as old. Deneb, Altair  windy fire   Literary Critism   "Burning the Small Dead" is in Gary Snyder's book, //The Back Country//. "Buring the Small Dead talks about a specific place. This poem was deaply influenced by Zen Buddhism and Japanese poetry and art. This poem focuses on the natural landscape. Even though it connects with ecological problems, the poem mostly focuses on honoring Zen Buddhism. The peom talks about how a whitebark tree lived for a hundred years but then it adds in Mt. Ritter. This poem celebrates the natural world and the cosmos (Clippinger, David). ** Works Cited **   [] []  Clippinger, David. "'Burning the Small Dead'." In Kimmelman, Burt, and Temple Cone, eds. //The Facts On File Companion to American Poetry//, vol. 2. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. //Bloom's Literary Reference Online//. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CAP065&SingleRecord=True (accessed May 2, 2011).

Cone, Temple. "'Axe Handles'." In Kimmelman, Burt, and Temple Cone, eds. //The Facts On File Companion to American Poetry//, vol. 2. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. //Bloom's Literary Reference Online//. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CTAP0034&SingleRecord=True (accessed May 2, 2011).

Magill N. Frank. //Critical Survey of Poetry English Language Series Revised Edition//. California: Salem Press, 1992. Print.

"Gary (Sherman) Snyder." //Gale Online Encyclopedia//. Detroit: Gale, 2011. //Literature Resource Center//. Web. 4 Apr. 2011.