| EdwinESmith.com | |||||||
Look Out |
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Gary Snyder, idealized in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums as "Japhy Ryder", is in my estimation second only to Kerouac himself in the pantheon of Beat poets. Of course, if there is a great deal of general kinship between Snyder and the other Beats, there is also a wide gulf of particulars separating them. For one thing, of all the Beats, he is the least sexually ambiguous. While sexuality is mere trivia, the distinction may go a long way towards explaining the origin of the readily apparent stylistic differences between Snyder and the Beats. Beat poets like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Peter Orlovsky are often quite scatological while Snyder is never merely scatological. Snyder may make use of earthy terms and refer to earthy processes but his goal is never to shock. The other Beats who tended to ambiguity or outright homosexuality in their sexual preferences return again and again to the art of outrageous statement, to the point that, finally, their profanity comes off as a series of exercises in mundanity. The fact that homosexuality itself was considered the ultimate in sexual obscenity to polite society during the Beat's creative prime seems to have caused more than just a few of them to have substituted obscenity in their poems for the statement "I am gay." It is a practice that was continued long after they began making explicit reference to their homosexuality in their published works. In perfecting the art of scatology profanity became something of a mark of credibility for the Beats; in short, for the gay poets of the Beat generation, saying the unsayable was the litmus test of creative integrity. The ultimate justification of scatology, that it expands the bounds of the legitimate vocabulary by eliminating the obfuscations of euphemism, seems to have been pretty well borne out by the Beats, but it has clearly linked their work to the repressive climate of the 1950's. Snyder, on the other hand, was not born beyond the pale in the eyes of polite society, and in the interviews and book reviews I've read, even when presented in the worst possible light he comes across as no worse than eccentric or a colorful western character. Snyder's work remains more relevant than the Beat's precisely because of his use of a less extravagant vocabulary. The supposedly large area of commonality between Snyder and the Beats has generally been assumed to be covered under the umbrella of "Zen poetry." I'm not certain that there is a much shared under this umbrella as has previously been supposed. Most of the Beats were only superficially interested in Buddhism, treating it more as a shibboleth than as a religion or as a philosophy. Snyder by all accounts, has attempted to live out the implications of his personal understanding of Buddhism. I make note of this distinction because it seems to me to be a point of profound qualitative and substantive variance between Snyder and the Beats. I called Snyder the second best Beat poet, but it seems to me now that he isn't really a member of that group or culture. Perhaps as a matter of kinship, yes, but as a matter of poetry, he clearly isn't a part of that band of turtleneck-wearing fashionistas that followed in the wake of Ginsberg and Kerouac. have been a long time in coming to appreciate Snyder's poetry. I used to think he was little more than a modern day Orientalist, mistaking him for one of the crowd of art school sissies who want to be Buddha on the weekend. Look Out is a strong corrective to that viewpoint. Look Out is a selected works and as such is intended as an introduction to his work for the general reader. I first saw this book several weeks or even months ago and resisted buying it. After having read it, I'm not sure where my uncertainty lay. As a primer to Snyder's work, poetry and prose, it is well designed. The selection was made by Snyder himself and he seems to have done a pretty thorough job of separating the good from the bad. Poets-all of us-round out their books with fluff and filler. To see what is clearly the main thematic thrust of his work in sharp relief without the clumsier or more transient pieces getting in the way makes it easier to go back and read the full texts of his other books and see the lesser works in their proper, complimentary role. The thrust of his take on Buddhism is more humane and more engaged with its environment than the version put forth by many of his contemporaries. Many of the writers of his generation allowed Buddhism or Zen philosophy to become vehicles for their own nihilism and moral torpor, summing up thousands of years of religious tradition as, "Anything goes/Nothing matters anyway." Snyder seems very clearly to believe that everything matters despite the perceived reality of ultimate personal nonexistence. In many ways I find the non-christian tradition of moral imperatives sounder and certainly braver than the carrot and stick foundation of Christian ethics. Not only does Snyder's work argue for kindness and personal integrity without the promise of heaven or the threat of hell, it does so convincingly. I would like to quote some of the poetry in Look Out to support that claim, but Snyder's poetry at first blush reads as observational material or as reportage. His themes present themselves through the accumulation of effects and the interplay of different poems so that it becomes very difficult to give an accurate representation of his work without quoting in some detail. Look Out is that selection of his work that presents itself best and short of quoting the whole book I can think of nothing else for the interested reader to do than to buy the book and read it himself. Though I was raised a Christian, I am not a Christian, and though I have an interest in world religions, I'm not a Buddhist either. The only portion of the bible I find utterly unassailable, utterly incapable of being twisted to venal ends by dogmatists, is the Sermon on the Mount. It is readily apparent in Look Out that Snyder has found a similar kernel of unassailable virtue in the traditions of Buddhism; in short, those things which we call compassion and charity. I've always believed that religion-any religion-that doesn't leave you with a warm feeling in your tummy isn't worth two beans. Look Out isn't going to convert me to Buddhism, but it has helped me understand the attraction of its disciplines and it has left me with a warm feeling in my tummy. |
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