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.
Reading Gary Snyder's Six Sections from Mountains and Rivers without End Plus one felt like reading Gary Snyder's journal written in a shorthand that only Gary Snyder can translate.
I have no clue what was going on. All I got out of this collection was that Gary Snyder likes buttermilk.
Here is one phrase from "Night Highway Ninety-Nine" that I found beautiful, probably because it was more like Brautigan's writing:
"Dreaming on a bench under newspapers I woke covered with Rhododendron blooms Alone in a State Park in Oregon."
Now that I think about it, the only thing about Gary Snyder that makes any sense is Brautigan's poem dedicated to Gary Snyder, from Rommel Drives Deep Into Egypt called "Third Eye":