Tawny Grammar: Essays

by Gary Snyder

Two beautifully paired essays, "Tawny Grammar" and "Good, Wild, Sacred," serve to offer an autobiographical framework for Gary Snyder's long work as a poet, environmentalist, and a leader of the Buddhist community in North America.

He begins standing outside a community hall in Portland, Oregon, in 1943 and concludes as a homesteader in the backcountry of Northern California more than forty-five years later. A wonderful introduction to Gary Snyder, this will also serve to remind his faithful readers of the thrill of his insights and his commitments crucial to our future on Turtle Island.

Each palm-size book in the Counterpoints series is meant to stay with you, whether safely in your pocket or long after you turn the last page. From short stories to essays to poems, these little books celebrate our most-beloved writers, whose work encapsulates the spirit of Counterpoint cutting-edge, wide-ranging, and independent.

Genres: Essays, Nature, Poetry

117 pages, Paperback

Published November 5, 2019

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.