Danger on Peaks: Poems

by Gary Snyder

Overview

When first published in 2004, Danger on Peaks was the poet's first new collection of poems in twenty years. Perhaps his most personal, autobiographical collection, it begins with the young poet ascending Mt. St. Helens in 1945, a climb accidentally timed with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was 15 years old. Almost sixty years later, after the great Buddhas at Bamiyan Valley were bombed and with the victims of the World Trade Center also "turned to dust," the poet composed a prayer while at Short Grass Temple in Senso–ji, a pilgrim on the path of Kannon, Goddess of Mercy.



This remarkable collection was greeted with broad praise, and as Julia Martin proclaimed, "Moving between relative and absolute ways of seeing, [Snyder] responds to the experience of global conflict and personal pain by reminding readers of the continuity of wildness, affirming the value of art, and invoking an ancient practice of wisdom and compassion."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619024519
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	10/14/2014
Edition description:	Deluxe Audio ed.
Pages:	92
Product dimensions:	7.20(w) x 10.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Gary Snyder is the author of more than twenty collections of poetry and prose. Since 1970 he has lived in the watershed of the South Yuba River in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1975, Snyder has also been awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry and the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award. His 1992 collection, No Nature, was a National Book Award finalist, and in 2008 he received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Snyder is a poet, environmentalist, educator and Zen Buddhist.

Read an Excerpt

For Carole
I first saw her in the zendo
at meal time— unwrapping bowls
head forward folding back the cloth
as server I was kneeling
to fill three sets of bowls each time
up the line
Her lithe leg
proud, skeptical,
passionate, trained
by the heights— by the danger on peaks

Table of Contents

I Mount St. Helens

The Mountain 5

The Climb 7

Atomic Dawn 9

Some Fate 10

1980: Letting Go 11

Blast Zone 13

To Ghost Lake 17

Pearly Everlasting 20

Enjoy the Day 22

II Yet Older Matters

Brief Years 25

Glacier Ghosts 38

III Daily Life

What to Tell, Still 41

Strong Spirit 43

Sharing an Oyster With the Captain 45

Summer of '97 47

Really the Real 50

Ankle-deep in Ashes 52

Winter Almond 54

Mariano Vallejo's Library 56

Waiting for a Ride 58

IV Steady, They Say

Doctor Coyote When He Had a Problem 61

Claws / Cause 62

How Many? 63

Loads on the Road 64

Carwash Time 65

To All the Girls Whose Ears I Pierced Back Then 66

She Knew All About Art 67

Coffee, Market, Blossoms 68

In the Santa Clarita Valley 69

Almost Okay Now 70

Sus 71

Day's Driving Done 72

Snow Flies, Burn Brush, Shut Down 73

Icy Mountains Constantly Walking 74

For Philip Zenshin Whalen 75

For Carole 76

Steady, They Say 77

V Dust in the Wind

Gray Squirrels 81

One Day in Late Summer 82

Spilling the Wind 83

California Laurel 84

Baking Bread 85

One Empty Bus 86

No Shadow 87

Shandel 88

Night Herons 89

The Acropolis Back When 90

The Emu 92

The Hie Shrine and the "One-Tree" District 94

Cormorants 95

To Go 96

One Thousand Cranes 97

For Anthea Corinne Snyder Lowry 99

The Great Bell of the Gion 100

VI After Bamiyan

After Bamiyan 103

Loose on Earth 106

Falling from a Height, Holding Hands 107

Senso-ji 108

Envoy 110

Notes 113

Thanks 115

Acknowledgments 117

Audio CD Track Listing 118