This Present Moment
New Poems
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
"This present moment
That lives on
To become
Long ago."
For his first collection of new poems since his celebrated Danger on Peaks, published in 2004, Gary Snyder finds himself ranging over the planet. Journeys to the Dolomites, to the north shore of Lake Tahoe, from Paris and Tuscany to the shrine at Delphi, from Santa Fe to Sella Pass, Snyder lays out these poems as a map of the last decade. Placed side–by–side, they become a path and a trail of complexity and lyrical regard, a sort of riprap of the poet's eighth decade. And in the mix are some of the most beautiful domestic poems of his great career, poems about his work as a homesteader and householder, as a father and husband, as a friend and neighbor. A centerpiece in this collection is a long poem about the death of his beloved, Carole Koda, a rich poem of grief and sorrow, rare in its steady resolved focus on a dying wife, of a power unequaled in American poetry.
As a friend is quoted in one of these new poems:
"I met the other lately in the far back of a bar,
musicians playing near the window and he
sweetly told me "listen to that music.
The self we hold so dear will soon be gone.""
Gary Snyder is one of the greatest American poets of the last century, and This Present Moment shows his command, his broad range, and his remarkable courage.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Snyder (Nobody Home), a Zen Buddhist and 1975 Pulitzer Prize winner who has been writing poetry and prose for over 50 years, continues to address themes present in much of his work. He focuses on his travels, the wonders of history, and the environment, all with heavy emphasis on the metaphysical. Snyder lives by the conviction that the "blue sky duomo" is "all the church we ll ever need," and his poems are jocular, yet poignant; in a forest he sees "someone napping with his chainsaw/ after lunch," and while watching squirrels he equates their "wildly horny ferociously aloof" chase to that of Artemis and Pan. In addition to his tributes to nature, he touches upon an ever-surprising variety of subjects: the Eiffel Tower, Michelangelo s "David," Abraham Lincoln, his computer, and polyandry. Of all the poems here, "Go Now," a retelling of his beloved s death, is most likely to evoke a spiritual experience. As Snyder describes her cremation, a harrowing yet beautiful experience, he recalls the fumes as he watched her body disappear, as well as the feeling of eternal love: "This is the price of attachment," he writes, "worth even the smell." Snyder has parceled out the decade since his last poetry collection (Danger on Peaks) into textured poems of a rare and welcome candor.
