Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

by Gary Snyder

Overview

By any measure, Gary Snyder is one of the greatest poets in America in the last century. From his first book of poems to his latest collection of essays, his work and his example, standing between Tu Fu and Thoreau, have been influential all over the world. Riprap, his first book of poems, was published in Japan in 1959 by Origin Press, and it is the fiftieth anniversary of that groundbreaking book we celebrate with this edition. A small press reprint of that book included Snyder's translations of Han Shan's Cold Mountain Poems, perhaps the finest translations of that remarkable poet ever made into English.

Reintroducing one of the twentieth century's foremost collections of poetry, this edition will please those already familiar with this work and excite a new generation of readers with its profound simplicity and spare elegance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781582436364
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	08/31/2010
Edition description:	Anniversary
Pages:	80
Sales rank:	319,076
Product dimensions:	5.45(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.22(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.

Table of Contents

	Riprap	1
	Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout	3
	The Late Snow & Lumber Strike of the Summer of Fifty-four	4
	Praise for Sick Women	6
	Piute Creek	8
	Milton by Firelight	9
	Above Pate Valley	11
	Water	12
	For a Far-out Friend	13
	Hay for the Horses	15
	Thin Ice	16
	Nooksack Valley	17
	All through the rains	18
	Migration of Birds	19
	Toji	20
	Higashi Hongwanji	21
	Kyoto: March	22
	A Stone Garden	23
	The Sappa Creek	26
	At five a.m. off the north coast of Sumatra...	27
	Goofing again...	28
	T-2 Tanker Blues	29
	Cartagena	31
	Riprap	32
	Cold Mountain Poems	33
	Afterword	65

Editorial Reviews

As early as the 1950s, before ecology became a household word, Snyder understood things about our civilization and economy that no one else was talking about, and he wrote about them with great authority and a sinewy line.
— The Nation

Richard Tillinghast

This poet's great gift has always been perfect visual clarity... and, needless to say, derives from Snyder's vision in the larger sense.
— The Village Voice

Paul Berman

His greatest strength-a quiet and profound elegance, an ability to write a simple phrase that seems to have been echoing through human consciousness for three or four thousand years.
— California Magazine

Lewis MacAdams

Long ago staked his claim as one of America's finest poets...[An] unswerving integrity [is] present throughout the development of Snyder's poetic sensibility.

Boston Herald

The master of lucid meditation . . . Readers are fortunate to have what Snyder wants to pass on.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Long ago staked his claim as one of America's finest poets . . . [An] unswerving integrity [is] present throughout the development of Snyder's poetic sensibility.”
—Boston Herald

“As early as the 1950s, before ecology became a household word, Snyder understood things about our civilization and economy that no one else was talking about, and he wrote about them with great authority and a sinewy line.” —Richard Tillinghast, The Nation

From the Publisher