The Back Country

by Gary Snyder

“A reaffirmation of a back country of the spirit."― Kirkus Reviews This collection is made up of four "Far West"―poems of the Western mountain country where, as a young man. Gary Snyder worked as a logger and forest ranger; "Far East"―poems written between 1956 and 1964 in Japan where he studied Zen at the monastery in Kyoto; "Kali"―poems inspired by a visit to India and his reading of Indian religious texts, particularly those of Shivaism and Tibetan Buddhism; and "Back"―poems done on his return to this country in 1964 which look again at our West with the eyes of India and Japan. The book concludes with a group of translations of the Japanese poet Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933), with whose work Snyder feels a close affinity. The title, The Back Country , has three major associations; wilderness. the "backward" countries, and the “back country" of the mind with its levels of being in the unconscious.

Genres: Poetry, Nature, 20th Century, Classics, Fiction, Philosophy, Literature

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

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.

Reviews

[Steve Saroff]

There was a time when I consumed every word I could find by Gary Snyder. It was back when most poetry I had found was as irrelevant as the lectures and lessons given in the classrooms that I had fled from. As a runaway I ran to what Snyder writes about in The Back Country. A place of mountains and forests, long blue beaches, and the nurturing solitude of rock, sky, and silence. Snyder touched a generation of us, those who were almost destroyed but managed to escape. We then received our education from books like his, and then from good people and good places. And, if you are able to understand the potential of love but have also been strong enough to go it alone, this book might be for you too. Start by reading just one book by Snyder, this powerful, slim, one.

" I don’t mind      living this way
Green hills      the long blue beach
But sometimes      sleeping in the open
I think back      when I had you"
- from Four Poems For Robin, Gary Snyder

[Stan]

If you think you dont like poetry, think again after you try this gem by Snyder. The "Four Poems for Robin" cracked my hear, at least by four.

[Erik]

Gary Snider is one of the most amazing people I have never met. He was born at the right time, but never quite fit in with his contemporaries. However, he still managed to carve a niche in the world of poetry and become one of the most important people of his generation. Gary Snyder has out-survived nearly all of the people who initially championed him. He made a name for himself on all sides of the globe, and he continues to inspire people to this day. I was a very young when I first discovered "The Back Country," but I have held on to that same copy I bought many years ago. It has traveled with me all over the globe, and will probably lay on my night stand until my dying day.

Imagist, New Romantic, Free Verse, Naturalist, Zen Poet... Whatever you wish to call him; Snyder's words truly are the written embodiment of peace, love, and understanding. Even if you choose to not read any of Snyder's poetry, just be sure to check out Kerouac's "The Dharma Bums." It's all about Gary, and is considered to be the major catalyst that ignited the entire '60s generation.

[Barrett Brassfield]

I found this collection of early Snyder poetry particularly valuable because it covers a key period of much fertile ground for him. From his time before, during and after living in Japan for the better part of thirteen years. Much of the bedrock of his work is made during this time and in his later work from the 1970's onward, we see the maturity that this brings, especially concerning his ecology of wild nature living as I like to call it. In his way, the young Snyder is forming a Dharma Gaia and it is a joy to read. He is also a great poet of love and desire, the forms it takes. For me, he is up there with Neruda in this regard. The Back Country also represents some of his great work in this particular garden:

Four Poems for Robin:

Siwashing it out once in Siuslaw Forest

I slept under rhododendron
All night blossoms fell
Shivering on a sheet of cardboard
Feet stuck in my pack
Hands deep in my pockets
Barely able to sleep.
I remembered when we were in school
Sleeping together in a big warm bed
We were the youngest lovers
When we broke up we were still nineteen.
Now our friends are married
You teach school back east
I dont mind living this way
Green hills the long blue beach
But sometimes sleeping in the open
I think back when I had you.


A spring night in Shokoku-ji

Eight years ago this May
We walked under cherry blossoms
At night in an orchard in Oregon.
All that I wanted then
Is forgotten now, but you.
Here in the night
In a garden of the old capital
I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao
I remember your cool body
Naked under a summer cotton dress.


An autumn morning in Shokoku-ji

Last night watching the Pleiades,
Breath smoking in the moonlight,
Bitter memory like vomit
Choked my throat.
I unrolled a sleeping bag
On mats on the porch
Under thick autumn stars.
In dream you appeared
(Three times in nine years)
Wild, cold, and accusing.
I woke shamed and angry:
The pointless wars of the heart.
Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter.
The first time I have
Ever seen them close.


December at Yase
You said, that October,
In the tall dry grass by the orchard
When you chose to be free,
“Again someday, maybe ten years.”

After college I saw you
One time. You were strange.
And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have
Gone by: I’ve always known
where you were—
I might have gone to you
Hoping to win your love back.
You still are single.

I didn’t.
I thought I must make it alone. I
Have done that.

Only in dream, like this dawn,
Does the grave, awed intensity
Of our young love
Return to my mind, to my flesh.

We had what the others
All crave and seek for;
We left it behind at nineteen.

I feel ancient, as though I had
Lived many lives.

And may never now know
If I am a fool
Or have done what my
karma demands.

[Philip Wetjen]

Reread this book of poetry by Gary Syder's imediately after finishing The Dharma Bums because the character 'Japhy Ryder' in the book was not just based on Gary Snyder, he WAS Gary Snyder. Many great poems based on Snyder's experiences in the Pacific Northwest, Japan and India.

[Fletcher Neil]

Never in my life have I been able to pick up a book of poetry and understand it.

After reading this collection, I now know that understanding is quite beside the point. I enjoyed it. Moreover, I felt it.

I will return to “This Tokyo” many times, I think.

[Edward Nugent]

It's not a single reading—they are poems after all. They take time to soak in and bounce around the mind, sometimes connecting, sometimes not, maybe another day, another time, another state of mind.

[Frank Aulenta]

His poems about his life in a small Japanese village are great. I would definitely consider reading another one of his collections.

[Chimen Georgette Kouri]

Don’t let the granola girls read this

[Sparrow .]

Gary Snyder lives! I mean, he is literally alive. (Anyway, I think so. I will check Wikipedia at the end of this essay.) Why isn’t he on NPR and PBS each week —and speaking in the halls of Congress!? We honor Bruce Springsteen & Billy Joel; why don’t we praise the man who built the mountain they stand on?

Opening at random:

madly whirling downhill
THE WITCH
who can make the electric lights go out
who can, as she sits in her apartment under the street
make you follow.

[From “Madly Whirling Downhill.”]

[Yes, Gary Snyder is alive – 92 years old.]

[Craig Werner]

Second re-read, this one as part of my journey through the Library of America's Snyder collection, which is a gift to the universe.

My previous review more or less stands, but I'd add that The Back Country is part of a genre of early career books in which poets sort of clean out their files. Not complaining. The book's sections deal with his experiences in the American West (both before and after his travels to Asia), in Japan, and his attempts to work through his relationships with women and/or the psychic anima figure. That one, suggestively titled Kali, reflects a set of problems common to a large number of men who pretty much "get" feminism (he wasn't calling it that yet) but don't find it easy to reconcile with male desire. A final section provides a small anthology of the Japanese poet Miya Kenji.

The poems I flagged to revist this time include A Walk, Foxtail Pine, Four Poems for Robin, For a Stone Girl at Sanchi, and Moon, Son of Heaven. (I compiled the list without looking at which I'd identified earlier, which I'll do now. (The cross-check reveals a fair amount of agreement at the very top and, as will usually be the case, some changes on the additions.)

Revisiting The Back Country, what struck me was the way it both reflects on his journey through the mid-60s and suggests directions that he would travel in the future. The book's divided into sections on his time logging, his travels to Japan and India, and his return to the U.S. where he was preparing to put down deep roots. There's also a collection of translations from Miyazawa Kenji, a Japanese poet whose affinities with Snyder are obvious. Not the place to start with Snyder if you don't know him; I'd probably go with Turtle Island or maybe Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems. My favorites in Back Country are "Foxtail Pine," "For a Stone Girl at Sanchi," and "Through the Smoke Hole." Other recommendations: "The Spring," "A Walk," "For the Boy who Was Dodger Point Lookout," "Yase: September," "The Manichaeans," Mother of the Buddha," and "To The Chinese Comrades."

[Joana]

"We live
On the meeting of the sun and earth.
We live--we live--and all our lives
Have led to this, this city,
Which is soon the world, this
Hopelessness where love of man
Or hate of man could matter
None, love if you will or
Contemplate or write or teach
But know in your human marrow you
Who read, that all you tread
Is earthquake rot and matter mental
Trembling, freedom is a void,
Peace war religion revolution
Will not help."

[Nicholas Trandahl]

Brilliant. Hardy. Incredibly visceral. Snyder is a master of the Beat Generation.

[Hans Ostrom]

I've read almost all of Snyder's books (poetry and nonfiction), and this book of poems is my favorite.

[justin, the geezer]

“Drunk last night
drunk the night before
…
I wonder what I said to everybody”

Incredibly uneven collection of poetry, but occasionally stumbles upon beauty in the fog of nostalgia.

some poems:

Four Poems for Robin
(Siwashing it out once in Siuslaw Forest)

“I slept under rhododendron
All night blossoms fell
Shivering on a sheet of cardboard
Feet stuck in my pack
Hands deep in my pockets
Barely able to sleep.
I remembered when we were in school
Sleeping together in a big warm bed
We were the youngest lovers
When we broke up we were still nineteen.
Now our friends are married
You teach school back east
I dont mind living this way
Green hills the long blue beach
But sometimes sleeping in the open
I think back when I had you.”

(December at Yase)

“You said, that October,
In the tall dry grass by the orchard
When you chose to be free,
‘Again someday, maybe ten years.’

After college I saw you
One time. You were strange.
And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have
Gone by: I've always known
where you were—
I might have gone to you
Hoping to win your love back.
You still are single.

I didn't.
I thought I must make it alone. I
Have done that.

Only in dream, like this dawn,
Does the grave, awed intensity
Of our young love
Return to my mind, to my flesh.

We had what the others
All crave and seek for;
We left it behind at nineteen.

I feel ancient, as though I had
Lived many lives.
And may never now know
If I am a fool
Or have done what my
karma demands.”

[Pablo Andrés]

Escuché por primera vez de Gary Snyder a través de una novela, “The Dharma Bums” de Jack Kerouac. En ella, el protagonista sigue los pasos de una versión literaria de Snyder, representada como una especie de cabra montés poética, un maestro Zen occidental.

Desde entonces he leído tres poemarios suyos. Es uno de mis poetas favoritos. Leyendo “The Back Country” creí finalmente entender por qué. Su poesía es cero artificio, pura materia. Es demasiado fácil para él hacer lo que todo gran artista sabe: mostrar— no decir.

Puedes sentir su soledad, realmente sentirla a través de sus palabras describiendo escuetamente un paraje, sin que nunca haya usado la palabra solo, solitario o soledad.

Creo que lo más memorable fue ‘Four Poems for Robin’. Aparte es algo raro porque Snyder usualmente escribe sobre cosas, no personas. Pero este me atravesó. Es una elegía en cuatro partes de la nostalgia de un amor ideal, lejano y perdido.

I dont mind   living this way   
Green hills   the long blue beach   
But sometimes   sleeping in the open
I think back   when I had you.

[Cris]

Sometimes poetry has an effect on me and for the most part these poems by Gary Snyder work. They work especially well if you have a fondness for the wilderness. I particularly liked the "Far West" poems, clearly immersed in the mountains, valleys, forests, and desert landscapes of the American West. Lots of rugged, wild, summer-soaked, snow-cold, pine-smelling, bloody, animalistic, sensual, passionate poems. The other three sections, particularly "Kali", are also quite good, though more hit and miss for my tastes. While they don't all move away from naturalistic imagery, they tend to be more a "back country" of the unconscious mind I guess; dream-like memories, wandering thoughts on past relationships, politics, existence.

[Shane]

Some great poetry paired with passages I didn't particularly care for. "Looking at Pictures to be put away" was a favorite:

Who was this girl
In her white night gown
Clutching a pair of jeans

On a foggy redwood deck.
She looks up at me tender,
Calm, surprised,

What will we remember
Bodies thick with food and lovers
After twenty years

Fantastic- reminds me of the feelings I get when I have looked back and wondered how those people who used to be so close to me are doing.

[Dominic Transilvanicus]

A travelogue through a couple of cultural, mythical and geographical spaces, from the Far West to India, Japan. Of course that the same theme of collusion between human and nature is present through everything Snyder writes, here so much more developed.

[Samiam]

You took me there- and back, Gary.

[Kai]

this mother fucking book....*rolls eyes all the way back into head*

[Nicholas Massey]

Poetry for the spirituality and religion of nature and the natural self. A great outsiders reduction of normal life. You should read this book if only for a berry feast.

[Jason]

Really inconsistent. So.e of it is just percy 20 something garbage. But there are mo.ents where you see who he will become.

[Román Villalobos]

Libro de cabecera.

[Nick]

Rolling snow turned peach-color the moon
left alone in the fading night makes a soft cry in the heavens and once more
drinks up the scattered light

[Stephanie Curtis]

Poetry is subjective and hard to review for me.

Do I regret reading this book: No

Did it give me sime big life changing perspective: No

Did I enjoy it: Yes

[Mat]

Very good collection of poems from Snyder. This book consists of five sections - 1) Far West (poems written when Snyder worked as a logger and on a trail crew in the Western mountain country of Oregon etc.; 2) Far East (poems written in Japan between 1956-1964 while he studied Zen Buddhism); 3) Kali (poems inspired by his trip to India where he met up with Ginsberg and Orlovsky and studied some famous Indian religious texts); 4) Back (poem written upon returning to the States but with new eyes having now lived in the East); and 5) Miyazawa Kenji (translations of poems written by this poet from Iwate Prefecture with whom Snyder says he shares a common poetic and aesthetic affinity).

I enjoyed the 'Far East' poems the best which makes sense considering that I live in Japan. I could relate to many of the experiences Snyder talked about in a first-hand manner. However, in other sections, I found some of Snyder's poems a little obscure, demanding of the reader a fairly high-level knowledge of various flora and fauna. I always feel like I have taken a zoology or botany class after reading one of his books. Just like one of his poetic role models, Ezra Pound, this book would be an even more enriching read if some notes or even pictures were supplied for the layperson wishing to understand these poems more deeply.

In my opinion, not Snyder's best book (for that make sure you read Turtle Island) but definitely one worth checking out.

[A.M.]

There are bits of passages and thoughts with which I connected, but for the most part, I found this collection of poetry exhausting to read.

I liked "Hitch Haiku" from the first section and a number of poems from the second section entitled "Far East." The poem entitled "Some Views Concerning the Proposed Site of a National Park" was darkly amusing, but it is a bit long, and I am not in the mood to type the entire things out here.

His shorter poems appeal to me the most:

ASLEEP ON THE TRAIN

Briefcase, tight garter
over the knees
peep of fat little thighs
roll and lean with the fall of the train

eyes
shut, mouth open, so young women
tire with the rest tired workers.
jerk with the speedup and slow

go-ahead signals flash by
the Special Express
has only one stop

where they wake from their trance
to themselves.

[Erik Akre]

Gary Snyder's work broadens the meaning of the word "wild." My thinking about the mountains, meditation, Zen, the Beat generation, bioregionalism, place, and poetry would not be the same without his writing. If I write poetry at all, it's because I've read his work.

In the Back Country, form is very organic. It's like an old gnarled tree or the shape of a boulder or a riverbed. It flows, "chaotically," it's order unknown, unperceived--even by him, ultimately? Rhyming seems to happen spontaneously and naturally, like spotting an elk on the slope, or coming across a bear in the forest. I love how he can seemingly infuse a sense of wabi-sabi in any aspect of life that might hint of the sacred. He crystallizes the wilderness in such diverse settings...

[Chris LaMay-West]

I've always loved Gary Snyder's poetry for the mix of subject matter- equal parts Buddhist philosophy, environmentalism, love of the outdoors of the U.S. West and Asian travelogue. All of this is in excellent display in this volume of work from the late 50s and early 60s, which is organized in sections covering poems written in the West while working on logging and trail crews, in Japan while studying Buddhism, traveling through India, and the back in the U.S.. There's also a section of translations Snyder did of Japanese poet Miyazawa Kenji, who's long been a favorite of mine. I was a little skeptical of this add-on, but it actually fits very well thematically.