Skip to main content

Exploring Gary Snyder's Connection To Seattle

Perhaps you’re familiar with Gary Snyder. Most famous for his affiliation with Beat poets like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, he work is really it’s own beast. One of my favorite writers, I read his work quite regularly. He’s quite influential on me.
I find the way he combines such things as zen, Chinese literature and nature poetry with geomorphology and geology simply fascinating. And his eye keeps looking at the west coast, with him spending a great deal of time in the Pacific Northwest.
His seminal work, Mountains and Rivers Without End covers a great deal of ground topic-wise. There are several poems with Pacific Northwest themes, but one strikes me most: “Night Highway 99“. (The link will take you to the Google Books edition of book.)
I remember when I first really read the title. “Really” meaning “attentive, aware, awake (in a zen-sort-of-way). The connection was instant. Growing up in Lynnwood just a few blocks from Highway 99, it’s very easy to envision the places he writes about. Also, with my journeys around the region, most of the towns he mentions I know. At least driving by, and many of them have memories of my footsteps upon the ground.
Definitely give Mr. Snyder a read. The rewards; magnificent!
Seattle's Aurora Bridge at night
Seattle’s Aurora Bridge at night

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Driving along in Kirkland , home of the modern yuppie, I’m passed by a new Mercedes. Lovely, silver, shiny, new, bling-bling; a part of me loaded with insecurity twinges while I purr along in my Toyota. Why? How come this is a metric of my self-esteem? Am I being unfair to myself, being upset by this train of thought and it’s influence? Consider, please, how much this viewpoint is drilled into us. Look at how often this imagery gets pushed into our faces, and how long that’s been going on. It shouldn’t surprise me, really, that I sometimes feel this way. Though my conscious values oppose this, the lingering thread of this programming has threads into the depths psyche.

Oh, A Meeting We Will Go

This post gives me pause. Meetings, the infernal overwrought obsession of our lives. It's not just corporate America, but the various groups and org's I've dallied with over the years suffer from meetopia, too. No one I know likes the blasted things, yet I don't know anyone offering up a successful resistance. Related to this, methinks, I have noted that I do a great deal over my workdays (check off a ridiculous number of to-dos) and accomplish little or nothing. The mass of tasks don't roll up to anything. And I've noticed a lingering sense of frustration lately. I spend precious little time reflecting on my goals, and how I can link them to what I do over the course of any given day. I'm so divorced from this, I really wonder what I really want to do, to accomplish any more. Within a recess of my brain comes a niggling thought. Perhaps this passion for meetings offers up a substitute for reflection. Knowing that we must account, personally, face-to-face f...