Gary Snyder

Where a lot of poets masturbate
or have an itch to scratch, Gary Snyder
is the quiet ungrandiose mate
of our travels, in which the spider

incarnates, incarnates, of Jonathan
Edwards, to burn at all our cul-de-sacs.
The canyon’s part of Mt. Chrysanthenum,
and it comes to a wren with its tact

to point out we are in aporia.
Smokey Bear puts out chagrin with his spade.
Being a wren kens ways from scoria,
out of a dry rockslide’s escapade

to the bottom, our journey too far in.
A shot of bourbon helps with the chagrin.

Woodford Halse - 20 March 2026

Gary Snyder ( b. 1930 ) now one of English Language Poetry’s Buddhist patriarchs, and formerly an associate of the Beats and a contributor to the San Francisco Renaissance.

A working man, a pilgrim, a scholar and an adventurer, never chaotic but always searching. A source for Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums (1958) and the model for the main character of the book.

I refer to his poems The Canyon Wren and Smokey The Bear Sutra, and I Went into The Maverick Bar ( something I used to do but have not done for decades now).