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Poets on the Peaks

John Suiter

4.21 · Rating details · 213 ratings · 16 reviews

A beautifully illustrated portrait of beat icons Kerouac, Snyder, and Whalen and the years in the Cascades high country that shaped their lives and work

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Hardcover, 352 pages

Published April 3rd 2002 by Counterpoint (first published April 2002)

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Hiking North Carolina's Lookout Towers by Peter Barr

Fire Lookout Books

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Mar 13, 2012 Richard rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2012

It seemed absolutely appropriate to finish this book on Earth Day. It's a knock-out account of Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Jack Kerouac's times as fire lookouts in the north Cascade range of Washington state - my backyard, albeit about an hour from my back door.

In its own way, Poets on the Peaks is a love story: love of nature and wilderness, brotherly love between the poets and the "community of lookouts," and if love can be applied to their, "craft or sullen art," and immersion in Buddhism It seemed absolutely appropriate to finish this book on Earth Day. It's a knock-out account of Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Jack Kerouac's times as fire lookouts in the north Cascade range of Washington state - my backyard, albeit about an hour from my back door.

In its own way, Poets on the Peaks is a love story: love of nature and wilderness, brotherly love between the poets and the "community of lookouts," and if love can be applied to their, "craft or sullen art," and immersion in Buddhism, then love of those things too.

Gary Snyder is at the center of the chronicle as a senior student of Zen, constant writer, and embodiment of the woodsman ethos. Whalen and Kerouac share those first attributes, but were more the city guys, a little softer and greener than Snyder. It's amazing that all three make peace with solitude, even Kerouac whose peace was much more fitful and who was ultimately much happier, even ecstatic, getting off the mountain than on. (I once spent a month camping in a remote valley on Hawaii, and even with weekly supply trips to town found myself babbling away to my invisible friends around the camp fire. No easy ride that solitude business.)

Poets on the Peaks tracks the three in and out of the mountains. The book covers the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance (and the influence of mentor par excellence Kenneth Rexroth,) the pivotal Gallery 6 reading, (where Allen Ginsberg premiered "Howl," and Snyder and Whalen also read.) Snyder's encounters with Joe McCarthy's paranoid America are covered, as well as his Dharma Bum adventures with Kerouac, and his sojourns to Japan. Kerouac's times at home with ma'mere, his hassles getting published, and his writing disciplines, as well as his stay with William Burroughs in Mexico City are also documented. Whalen is the least chronicled of the three, and though we get a picture, it's more a snapshot than the portraits we get of Snyder and Kerouac. Whalen seemed to be less the public man than his friends. Author John Suitor fills things out with capsule histories of the national forests, the ins and outs of life as a lookout, and even the eventual deconstruction of the lookout structures.

Kerouac died in 1969, at the age of 47, near twenty years after his lookout and Dharma adventures, pretty much a sullen and defeated alcoholic, and I can't read of his later life and passage without profound sadness. He was ruined by booze, and his ruination was a loss, and a waste, and a long period of deep suffering. Whalen passed quietly in 1993. And Gary Snyder is the last man standing - not only among his two lookout/poet comrades, but with Michael McClure, the last of the generation.

All three men have absolutely secure reputations in American letters, but Snyder, still at the top of his game, and experiencing a resurgence with the publication of his latest volume, "Danger on Peaks," is an avatar of the ecological movement, and is ever green as an essayist, poet, and spiritual father of deep-ecology.

I loved this book, and would recommend it to anyone interested in the period, the poets, or American lit. I don't think it's a specialist's book, but I've loved these guys all my life, so maybe I'm a little besotted. ...more

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Feb 07, 2011 Josh rated it really liked it

This is a little dry if you're not already interested, but if you ARE interested in Snyder, Whalen & Kerouac (and to a lesser extent Ginsberg), it's great stuff. An in-depth look at a really formative period and experience for all of them -- serving as fire-lookouts in the Cascades. The author does a great job of tracing how the experience plays out in their later work and how it fostered their interest in Zen. Beautiful photos, too. ...more

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May 25, 2020 Jim McDonald rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

This biography is a snapshot of the lives of three accomplished writers; Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen and their time as fire lookouts in the North Cascades in the early 1950s.
As there is currently no biography of Snyder it is an important source of material about his early life.

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Oct 10, 2017 Porter Fox rated it it was amazing

The best biography of the Beats I've ever read. Their time as fire lookouts in the North Cascades is fascinating. ...more

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Jul 04, 2017 Diana Rose rated it really liked it

Shelves: owned

A part of my collection I will never part with..takes you on a journey into nature with the Beats with their eye view of rhe world.

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Feb 13, 2017 Robert Steelquist rated it it was amazing

John Suiter has compiled a masterpiece of decoding Snyder, Whalen and Kerouac and their relationships with each other, with Zen, with literature and with the North Cascades landscape. The perceptiveness and research that went into this book set it apart. Of course, the writers' own works tell part of the story, but Suiter draws from letters, third-party accounts, and his own interviews to fill out a story that is, after all, about solitude and its influence on these writers. Snyder and Whalen pr ...more

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Jan 17, 2016 Cheryl rated it it was ok

The Beats seem like they were in another country; I don't think we heard about them where I grew up. I know for sure my grandfather lost his mind over the Beatles, and then died not long after, so perhaps he did hear about these guys. However, they were so influential, and this book is more about Gary Snyder and Phillip Whalen than Kerouac and the rabid rejection of capitalism and embrace of bohemia, so overall, it was a fascinating look into the nature experiences that helped inform their art a ...more

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Sep 17, 2009 John rated it it was amazing

Wonderful, gracefully written book covering the early-mid fifties when first Gary Snyder, and then Philip Whalen and Kerouac, took summer jobs as fire lookout in the Cascade mountains to practice Buddhism and hone their writing. The book weaves biographies of the 3 authors back and forth, and the enhanced focus on just a few summers gives you a vivid, condensed sense of the passage of this crucial time. A great chapter on the famous Six Gallery reading in SF that everyone now says launched the b ...more

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Sep 21, 2011 Mmars rated it really liked it

I love unique books. And this definitely fits that category. What begins as a book about two guys who spent summers as fire lookouts in the early fifties becomes a study of the intertwining of zen, poetry, and the solitude of nature contrasted with the realities of civilization in the off-season - particularly the political blacklisting of the McCarthy era. I would have liked to see more poetry included and more historic photos of the lookouts and area. However, the story of Gary Snyder and Phil ...more

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Jan 08, 2008 Madeline rated it it was ok

Recommends it for: people who like Kerouac, nature fans, fans of Buddhism

Shelves: 2009, books-about-books, non-fiction, history, library-books

This read a little like a magazine profile, which would have been fine if it were a magazine profile - somewhere classy, right, with intellectual pretensions - but it's a book and I want something a little meatier.

My other problems were personal problems I have with the Beat poets, but they do not bear going into. I did like the parts that talked about human interaction with nature a lot. (And also the mostly tangential stuff about the labor movement.) ...more

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Jul 27, 2012 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: grown-up-books

A really great and inspiring book! The writing and the photos are both beautiful. The unique thing about this book is that it is as much a portrait of the mountains themselves as of the poets. It's also a well researched account of the early days of Snyder and Whalen, their friendship with Kerouac and Ginsberg, and how these mountains played a part in all of their development as writers and as people.

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Jul 10, 2007 Erin rated it it was amazing

An essential spark that helped to ignite my senior thesis at Middlebury College. The photos and writing in this book are beautiful, and will make you wish that you had lived the life of the Beats. This is the nice, not the naughty side of these guys.

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