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A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds
This paperback edition of A Place in Space features 29 essays written over the past 40 years, with 13 essays written since 1990. Displaying Gary Snyder's playful and subtle intellect, these pieces explore our place on Earth and help set the tone for attitudes toward the environment.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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408 people want to read
About the author
Gary Snyder
323 books645 followersGary 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.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
December 3, 2023
An absolutely stellar collection of deep, intelligent essays.
But first I should begin with a 'bias disclaimer' as Gary Snyder is probably one of my favorite people in the whole world. In fact, you might call him my 'hero'. He not only talks the talk but walks the walk, so to speak. The way he chose to live his life by settling down in a rural homestead, where he raised his family, living the life of Thoreau to some degree (but in the 20th Century) and trying to establish a bioregional watershed community is, to me, completely exemplary behavior, given the dire state of affairs with the planet.
In the very final essay in this collection, he talks about this home, Kitkitdizze, in the Sierra Nevada, and how he came to settle down there and learn from the environment around him. But that is one of the lighter essays. In many of the other essays in his incredible collection, Snyder very astutely puts his finger on many of the environmental problems in our world and highlights, more importantly, how human beings, especially us Occidentals, need to change our whole way of life if we plan on surviving. As Snyder says elsewhere, we really should be making plans for the coming millenia not just for the immediate future, if we are interested in leaving behind a liveable planet for our descendants.
Although Snyder is better known for his poetry, to me, it's in his prose, especially his essays where his brilliant mind really shines through. There is a little bit of everything in this collection - if you want to read about the Beats, you can find it (but only in one major essay), if you want to read about ecology, there's plenty of that in here, if you want to read about Native American mythology or Chinese (or Japanese) literature, it can be found here too. Basically, we are dealing with THE most intelligent member of the Beat Generation and it's a good thing that he is still alive, now 93 years old. The last beat standing. May he live to 100 and beyond!
This is an incredibly important book. With the environmental crisis, we all have a feeling of impending doom, deep down in our bones - this book offers no quick-fix solutions, but some ideas on how we can adjust our ways of living to forge a more viable and liveable future for the human race.
But first I should begin with a 'bias disclaimer' as Gary Snyder is probably one of my favorite people in the whole world. In fact, you might call him my 'hero'. He not only talks the talk but walks the walk, so to speak. The way he chose to live his life by settling down in a rural homestead, where he raised his family, living the life of Thoreau to some degree (but in the 20th Century) and trying to establish a bioregional watershed community is, to me, completely exemplary behavior, given the dire state of affairs with the planet.
In the very final essay in this collection, he talks about this home, Kitkitdizze, in the Sierra Nevada, and how he came to settle down there and learn from the environment around him. But that is one of the lighter essays. In many of the other essays in his incredible collection, Snyder very astutely puts his finger on many of the environmental problems in our world and highlights, more importantly, how human beings, especially us Occidentals, need to change our whole way of life if we plan on surviving. As Snyder says elsewhere, we really should be making plans for the coming millenia not just for the immediate future, if we are interested in leaving behind a liveable planet for our descendants.
Although Snyder is better known for his poetry, to me, it's in his prose, especially his essays where his brilliant mind really shines through. There is a little bit of everything in this collection - if you want to read about the Beats, you can find it (but only in one major essay), if you want to read about ecology, there's plenty of that in here, if you want to read about Native American mythology or Chinese (or Japanese) literature, it can be found here too. Basically, we are dealing with THE most intelligent member of the Beat Generation and it's a good thing that he is still alive, now 93 years old. The last beat standing. May he live to 100 and beyond!
This is an incredibly important book. With the environmental crisis, we all have a feeling of impending doom, deep down in our bones - this book offers no quick-fix solutions, but some ideas on how we can adjust our ways of living to forge a more viable and liveable future for the human race.
November 16, 2018
Cozy yet radical. This collection of essays from Snyder covers a broad range of topics but they are all brought together through the unique style of Snyder's prose – direct, impassioned, and compassionate. Worthwhile read for anyone interested in poetry, ecology, conservation, and religion, and how these things can all come together in cohesive ways.
January 2, 2015
Gary Snyder is a delight to read. His (clearly) gentle nature is introduced to the reader in his note in the front of this book , where he asks us to be "lean, compassionate and virtuously ferocious, living in the self-disciplined elegance of wild mind."
I love his poetry, but have always been drawn to his essays (and his chats or talks, which some of these chapters are texts of) again and again. Like Wendell Berry, he shapes his political theory in the everyday practical, with chapters like "The Yogin and the Philosopher", "A Single Breath" and my personal favorite, "A Village Council of All Beings".
I love his poetry, but have always been drawn to his essays (and his chats or talks, which some of these chapters are texts of) again and again. Like Wendell Berry, he shapes his political theory in the everyday practical, with chapters like "The Yogin and the Philosopher", "A Single Breath" and my personal favorite, "A Village Council of All Beings".
October 13, 2023
*Bernie Sanders meme* I am once again spiritually cleansed upon reading Gary Snyder.
It turns out the exceptional poet is also an exceptional essayist - go figure. The philosophy expounded by Snyder throughout these decades-spanning pieces is a wordier and rhetorically sturdier manifestation of that found in his poetry, but enlivened with anecdotes, facts, and passionate calls to stop fucking ruining everything that the poems (justifiably, from an aesthetic POV) tend to elide. Snyder’s breadth of knowledge, ranging from ecology to Buddhist theology to anthropology, continues to astound, and he integrates it all into a system of thinking as adaptably applicable as it is fundamentally decent. The worst thing about this collection is the horror of realizing we’ve followed the exact economic/political/ecological trajectories which Snyder so presciently warned us against in the earliest essays dating from the 1960s. It’s almost enough to make you wish he wasn’t still plugging along at 93 years old, so that he needn’t have witnessed for himself the last few decades of unmitigated destruction, callous disregard for life, and prideful ignorance. We have failed him, and we’re too lost to feel shame.
A great autumn read!
Favorite Quotes:
- “The work of art has always been to demonstrate and celebrate the interconnectedness: not to make everything ‘one’ but to make the ‘many’ authentic, to help illuminate it all.” - “Goddess of Mountains and Rivers,”, pg. 90
- “Poetry will not only integrate and stabilize, it will break open ways out of the accustomed habits of perception and allow one to slip into different possibilities - some wise, some perhaps bizarre, but all of them equally real, and some holding a promise of further new angles of insight.” - “What Poetry Did in China,” pg. 93
- “A sense of fleeting life and tiny size in vast calm void on the arm of the curve of the planet makes us also bugs in a realm of flowers. No judgements are made, but through those gazing meditations lies a compassionate, broad view. The moments of loneliness and vacillation (‘a warbler lost in a cloud!’) are not only human but correct. We and nature are companions, and although authoritative voices do not speak from clouds, a vast, subtle music surrounds us, accessible via clarity and serenity.” - “Energy from the Moon,” pg. 119-120
- “The watershed is beyond the dichotomies of orderly/disorderly, for its forms are free, but somehow inevitable. The life that comes to flourish within it constitutes the first kind of community.” - “Coming into the Watershed,” pg. 230
It turns out the exceptional poet is also an exceptional essayist - go figure. The philosophy expounded by Snyder throughout these decades-spanning pieces is a wordier and rhetorically sturdier manifestation of that found in his poetry, but enlivened with anecdotes, facts, and passionate calls to stop fucking ruining everything that the poems (justifiably, from an aesthetic POV) tend to elide. Snyder’s breadth of knowledge, ranging from ecology to Buddhist theology to anthropology, continues to astound, and he integrates it all into a system of thinking as adaptably applicable as it is fundamentally decent. The worst thing about this collection is the horror of realizing we’ve followed the exact economic/political/ecological trajectories which Snyder so presciently warned us against in the earliest essays dating from the 1960s. It’s almost enough to make you wish he wasn’t still plugging along at 93 years old, so that he needn’t have witnessed for himself the last few decades of unmitigated destruction, callous disregard for life, and prideful ignorance. We have failed him, and we’re too lost to feel shame.
A great autumn read!
Favorite Quotes:
- “The work of art has always been to demonstrate and celebrate the interconnectedness: not to make everything ‘one’ but to make the ‘many’ authentic, to help illuminate it all.” - “Goddess of Mountains and Rivers,”, pg. 90
- “Poetry will not only integrate and stabilize, it will break open ways out of the accustomed habits of perception and allow one to slip into different possibilities - some wise, some perhaps bizarre, but all of them equally real, and some holding a promise of further new angles of insight.” - “What Poetry Did in China,” pg. 93
- “A sense of fleeting life and tiny size in vast calm void on the arm of the curve of the planet makes us also bugs in a realm of flowers. No judgements are made, but through those gazing meditations lies a compassionate, broad view. The moments of loneliness and vacillation (‘a warbler lost in a cloud!’) are not only human but correct. We and nature are companions, and although authoritative voices do not speak from clouds, a vast, subtle music surrounds us, accessible via clarity and serenity.” - “Energy from the Moon,” pg. 119-120
- “The watershed is beyond the dichotomies of orderly/disorderly, for its forms are free, but somehow inevitable. The life that comes to flourish within it constitutes the first kind of community.” - “Coming into the Watershed,” pg. 230
August 10, 2016
Snyder's essays here are decades old, but they still speak with authority and clear thought. He provides a realistic and spiritual approach to problems that still plague the planet, along with a model for living and relating that is ageless.
July 19, 2017
I look to Gary Snyder to help set the intricacies of my moral compass. There are many things to consider and the root of it is learning from nature. It is not setting out to learn something, but the "being" of Zen where one learns to appreciate what nature –the wild– has to offer, not by observing, but by feeling. This leads us to a different viewpoint of the world and our responsibilities as a human being in it.
These essays distill many of Snyder's thoughts about how he lives in the world and we can learn much from them.
These essays distill many of Snyder's thoughts about how he lives in the world and we can learn much from them.
November 20, 2019
I've ticked as "read" but actually can't get past page 136. Nothing new here just v simple ideas beefed up with lots of filler. It seems to me the author is showing off his knowledge of obscure religions/ leaders/followers etc.
November 17, 2019
God bless Gary Snyder
July 25, 2020
Would give 4 stars for Part 3: Watersheds
January 10, 2026
One of my favorite books of all time. It just is.
April 1, 2023
A Place in Space is a collection of unrelated essays by Gary Snyder on environmentalism, Chinese poetry, Zen Buddhism and simple living. Gary Snyder is knowledgeable about Asian languages and poetics but writes in a style that is inspiring and easy to read.
I keep this book in my office; it makes for great lunchtime reading because one can read and finish an essay in one sitting. It is not a book that needs to be read from beginning to end, but rather, its chapters can be read randomly according to what looks interesting on a given day.
I keep this book in my office; it makes for great lunchtime reading because one can read and finish an essay in one sitting. It is not a book that needs to be read from beginning to end, but rather, its chapters can be read randomly according to what looks interesting on a given day.
March 17, 2024
This book is a collection of essays by a poet named Gary Snyder that talks about our connection with nature, religion/spirituality with nature (with Buddhist influence and more)
He is an influential poet that started a poetry movement back in the 50's in SF about environmental activism. Some of the essays and poems he wrote were incredibly hard to understand. But after researching each essay, it helped. He's a genius and ahead of his generation. This book was published in the gos and he talks about things that we are just now starting to talk about in the news.
He is an influential poet that started a poetry movement back in the 50's in SF about environmental activism. Some of the essays and poems he wrote were incredibly hard to understand. But after researching each essay, it helped. He's a genius and ahead of his generation. This book was published in the gos and he talks about things that we are just now starting to talk about in the news.
June 15, 2016
This collection touches base on environmental degradation, issues of over population and animal rights, Buddhist/Zen practices, and much, much more.
Snyder brings insight, honesty, and personality to his analytical work, exploring the interconnectedness of literature, history, anthropology, ecology, and politics.
I wholeheartedly endorse this book.
Snyder brings insight, honesty, and personality to his analytical work, exploring the interconnectedness of literature, history, anthropology, ecology, and politics.
I wholeheartedly endorse this book.
September 6, 2014
A nice collection from one of the greatest environmental writers of our time. He masterfully integrates the wisdom traditions of the native, oriental and occidental to provide moving insights about how wilderness can transform us.
November 8, 2016
Very interesting. Made me think a lot about sustainability and environmentalism. Would recommend to everyone (at least certain essays) and I know I'll definitely come back to it (which is rare for me to do with books).
November 6, 2007
A really good read for anyone interested in looking a people through a perspective other than consumerist capitalism.
July 15, 2009
The most compelling essays in this book of poetic prose concern Snyder's musings over the role of language, literature and story in the natural world.
August 10, 2012
Great stuff! There's an awesome essay on the Beats he wrote to be published in Japan. And how did I get to be this old without ever hearing the Smokey the Bear Sutra before?!
February 20, 2018
I enjoy Gary Snyder's orientation, and find it easier to enjoy his prose than his poetry. This is a good blend of writings on buddhist ethics, bio-regions, and asian poetry.
December 22, 2015
Essays on Buddhist, poetry, the environment, and life.
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December 31, 2023I loved it! Hearing his theory was fascinating and changed my view of the world. His writing is great.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews