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I Never Did Know Exactly What Was Meant By The Term "the Beats," But Let's Say That The Original Meeting, Association, Comradeship Of Allen Ginsberg, Myself, Michael Mcclure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Philip Whalen, Who's Not Here, Lew Welch, Who's Dead, Gregory Corso, For Me, To A Somewhat Lesser Extent (i Never Knew Gregory As Well As The Others) Did Embody A Criticism And A Vision Which We Shared In Various Ways, And Then Went Our Own Ways For Many Years.

-Gary Snyder

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I Never Did Know

Gary Snyder

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I Never Did Know Exactly What Was Meant By The Term "the Beats," But Let's Say That The Original Meeting, Association, Comradeship Of Allen Ginsberg, Myself, Michael Mcclure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Philip Whalen, Who's Not Here, Lew Welch, Who's Dead, Gregory Corso, For Me, To A Somewhat Lesser Extent (i Never Knew Gregory As Well As The Others) Did Embody A Criticism And A Vision Which We Shared In Various Ways, And Then Went Our Own Ways For Many Years.

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All Those Years And Their Moments— Crackling Bacon, Slamming Car Doors, Poems Tried Out On Friends, Will Be One More Archive, One More Shaky Text.

I Recalled When I Worked In The Woods And The Bars Of Madras, Oregon. That Short-haired Joy And Roughness America Your Stupidity. I Could Almost Love You Again.

The Mercy Of The West Has Been Social Revolution; The Mercy Of The East Has Been Individual Insight Into The Basic Self/void.

Streams And Mountains Never Stay The Same.

I Pledge Allegiance To The Soil Of Turtle Island, And To The Beings Who Thereon Dwell One Ecosystem In Diversity Under The Sun With Joyful Interpenetratio N For All.

Stay Together Learn The Flowers Go Light

In The 40,000 Year Time Scale We're All The Same People. We're All Equally Primitive, Give Or Take Two Or Three Thousand Years Here Or A Hundred Years There.

Today We Are Aware As Never Before Of The Plurality Of Human Life-styles And Possibilities, While At The Same Time Being Tied, Like In An Old Silent Movie, To A Runaway Locomotive Rushing Headlong Toward A Very Singular Catastrophe

I See A Vision Of A Great Rucksack Revolution Thousands Or Even Millions Of Young Americans Wandering Around With Rucksacks, Going Up To Mountains To Pray, Making Children Laugh And Old Men Glad, Making Young Girls Happy And Old Girls Happier, All Of 'em Zen Lunatics Who Go About Writing Poems That Happen To Appear In Their Heads For No Reason And Also By Being Kind And Also By Strange Unexpected Acts Keep Giving Visions Of Eternal Freedom To Everybody And To All Living Creatures.

Revolutionary Consciousness Is To Be Found Among The Most Ruthlessly Exploited Masses: Animals, Trees, Water, Air, Grasses

Clouds Sink Down The Hills Coffee Is Hot Again. The Dog Turns And Turns About, Stops And Sleeps.

You Run Into People Who Want To Write Poetry Who Don't Want To Read Anything In The Tradition. That's Like Wanting To Be A Builder But Not Finding Out What Different Kinds Of Wood You Use.

Practically Speaking, A Life That Is Vowed To Simplicity, Appropriate Boldness, Good Humor, Gratitude, Unstinting Work And Play, And Lots Of Walking, Brings Us Close To The Actually Existing World And Its Wholeness.

Nature Is Orderly. That Which Appears To Be Chaotic In Nature Is Only A More Complex Kind Of Order.

Thought Is Just An Apprehension Of Touch.

Poetry A Riprap On The Slick Rock Of Metaphysics

In The Belly Of The Furnace Of Creativity Is A Sexual Fire; The Flames Twine About Each Other In Fear And Delight. The Same Sort Of Coiling, At A Cooler, Slower Pace, Is What The Life Of This Planet Looks Like. The Enormous Spirals Of Typhoons, The Twists And Turns Of Mountain Ranges And Gorges, The Waves And The Deep Ocean Currents - A Dragonlike Writhing.

Sometime In The Last Ten Years The Best Brains Of The Occident Discovered To Their Amazement That We Live In An Environment. This Discovery Has Been Forced On Us By The Realization That We Are Approaching The Limits Of Something.

In Paul Friedrich's Book Proto-indo-european Trees He Identifies The "semantic Primitives" Of The Indo-european Tribe Of Languages Through A Group Of Words That Have Not Changed Much Through Twelve Thousand Years - And Those Are Tree Names: Especially Birch, Willow, Adler, Elm, Ash, Apple And Beech (bher, Wyt, Alysos, Ulmo, Os, Abul, Bhago). Seed Syllables, Bija, Of The Life Of The West.

Three-fourths Of Philosophy And Literature Is The Talk Of People Trying To Convince Themselves That They Really Like The Cage They Were Tricked Into Entering.

Burning The Small Dead Branches Broke From Beneath Thick Spreading Whitebark Pine. A Hundred Summers Snowmelt Rock And Air Hiss In A Twisted Bough.

Nature Is Not A Place To Visit. It Is Home.

Wherever Man Exists, He Finds The Need To Redesign, To Recreate The World. A More Beautiful World, Purer, Sweeter Smelling And More Colorful. A Garden Is Probably The Spot Where The Hopes For Civilization Are Best Captured. In Fact, Man Defines Himself By His Garden. My Grandmother Standing Wordless Fifteen Minutes Between Rows Of Loganberries, Clippers Poised In Her Hand.

Lay Down These Words Before Your Mind Like Rocks. Placed Solid, By Hands In Choice Of Place, Set Before The Body Of The Mind In Space And Time: Solidity Of Bark, Leaf, Or Wall Riprap Of Things: Cobble Of Milky Way. Straying Planets, These Poems, People, Lost Ponies With Dragging Saddles -- And Rocky Sure-foot Trails. The Worlds Like An Endless Four-dimensional Game Of Go. Ants And Pebbles In The Thin Loam, Each Rock A Word A Creek-washed Stone Granite: Ingrained With Torment Of Fire And Weight Crystal And Sediment Linked Hot All Change, In Thoughts, As Well As Things.

Our Relation To The Natural World Takes Place In A Place.

I Never Find Words Right Away. Poems For Me Always Begin With Images And Rhythms, Shapes, Feelings, Forms, Dances In The Back Of My Mind.

All This New Stuff Goes On Top Turn It Over, Turn It Over Wait And Water Down From The Dark Bottom Turn It Inside Out Let It Spread Through Sift Down Even. Watch It Sprout. A Mind Like Compost.

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For Those Who Can, One Of The Things To Do Is Not To Move. To Stay Put. That Doesn't Mean Don't Travel; It Means Have A Place And Get Involved In What Can Be Done In That Place. That's The Only Way We're Going To Have A Representative Democracy In America. Nobody Stays Anywhere Long Enough To Take Responsibility For A Local Community.

A Reading Is A Kind Of Communion. The Poet Articulates The Semi-known For The Tribe.

Read Carefully, Then Don't Read; Work Hard, Then Forget About It; Know Your Tradition, Then Liberate Yourself From It; Learn Language, Then Free Yourself From It. Finally, Know At Least One Form Of Magic.

You Should Really Know What The Complete Natural World Of Your Region Is And Know What All Its Interactions Are And How You Are Interacting With It Yourself. This Is Just Part Of The Work Of Becoming Who You Are, Where You Are.

Becoming Who You Are

When Making An Axe Handle The Pattern Is Not Far Off.

The Size Of The Place That One Becomes A Member Of Is Limited Only By The Size Of One’s Heart.

To Work On Behalf Of The Wild Is To Restore Culture

Wilderness Is A Place Where The Wild Potential Is Fully Expressed, A Diversity Of Living And Nonliving Beings Flourishing According To Their Own Sorts Of Order. In Ecology We Speak Of "wild Systems." When An Ecosystem Is Fully Functioning, All The Members Are Present At The Assembly. To Speak Of Wilderness Is To Speak Of Wholeness. Human Beings Came Out Of That Wholeness, And To Consider The Possibility Of Reactivating Membership In The Assembly Of All Beings Is In No Way Regressive.

If, After Obtaining Buddhahood, Anyone In My Land Gets Tossed In Jail On A Vagrancy Rap, May I Not Attain Highest Perfect Enlightenment.

Being The Stream Meditation Is Not Just A Rest Or Retreat From The Turmoil Of The Stream Or The Impurity Of The World. It Is A Way Of Being The Stream, So That One Can Be At Home In Both The White Water And The Eddies. Meditation May Take One Out Of The World, But It Also Puts One Totally Into It.

In Western Civilization, Our Elders Are Books.

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You Don't Want To Be Victimized By Your Lesser Talents.

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Knowing Where And Who Are Intimately Linked.

Bearing In His Right Paw The Shovel That Digs To The Truth Beneath Appearances, Cut The Roots Of Useless Attachments, And Flings Damp Sand On The Fires Of Greed And War; His Left Paw In The Mudra Of Comradely Display - Indicating That All Creatures Have The Full Right To Live To Their Limits And That Deer, Rabbits, Chipmunks, Snakes, Dandelions, And Lizards All Grow In The Realm Of The Dharma.

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I Never Did Know Exactly What Was Meant By The Term "the Beats," But Let's Say That The Original Meeting, Association, Comradeship Of Allen Ginsberg, Myself, Michael Mcclure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Philip Whalen, Who's Not Here, Lew Welch, Who's Dead, Gregory Corso, For Me, To A Somewhat Lesser Extent (i Never Knew Gregory As Well As The Others) Did Embody A Criticism And A Vision Which We Shared In Various Ways, And Then Went Our Own Ways For Many Years.

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My Grandmother Standing Wordless Fifteen Minutes Between Rows Of Loganberries, Clippers Poised In Her Hand.

True Affluence Is To Not Need Anything.

The Lessons We Learn From The Wild Become The Etiquette Of Freedom.

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The Other Side Of The "sacred" Is The Sight Of Your Beloved In The Underworld, Dripping With Maggots.

Ko Un's Poems Evoke The Open Creativity And Fluidity Of Nature, And Funny Turns And Twists Of Mind. Mind Is Sometimes Registered In Buddhist Terms - Buddhist Practice Being Part Of Ko Un's Background. Ko Un Writes Spare, Short-line Lyrics Direct To The Point, But Often Intricate In Both Wit And Meaning. Ko Un Has Now Traveled Worldwide And Is Not Only A Major Spokesman For All Korean Culture, But A Voice For Planet Earth Watershed As Well.

Will Be But Corpses Dressed In Frocks, Who Cannot Speak To Birds Or Rocks.

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I Hold The Most Archaic Values On Earth ... The Fertility Of The Soul, The Magic Of The Animals, The Power-vision In Solitude.... The Love And Ecstasy Of The Dance, The Common Work Of The Tribe.

Walking Is The Exact Balance Between Spirit And Humility.

Wildness It Is Perennially Within Us, Dormant As A Hard-shelled Seed, Awaiting The Fire Or Flood That Awakes It Again.

I Thought, That Day I Started, I Sure Would Hate To Do This All My Life, And Dammit, That’s Just What I’ve Gone And Done.

All That We Did Was Human, Stupid, Easily Forgiven, Not Quite Right.

Range After Range Of Mountains. Year After Year After Year. I Am Still In Love.

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With No Surroundings There Can Be No Path, And With No Path One Cannot Become Free.

Place And The Scale Of Space Must Be Measured Against Our Bodies And Their Capabilities.

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Walking Meditation

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When The Mind Is Exhausted Of Images, It Invents Its Own.

Like, When We Did Parliament And Funkadelic And Bootsy, It Was Actually One Thing. But There Were So Many People That You Could Split Them Up Into Different Groups. And Then, When We Went Out On Tour And They [the Record Companies] Would See Us All Up There Together - We Had Five, Six Guitars Playing At One Time, Not Including The Bass! -, They Said: "wait A Minute, That's Just One Whole Group, Selling Different Names!" But It Wasn't - We Had Enough People In The Group That Each Member Would Have A Section To Be Another Group. So Now We're Finally Starting To Get Them To Understand That.

Doom Scenarios, Even Though They Might Be True, Are Not Politically Or Psychologically Effective. The First Step . . . Is To Make Us Love The World Rather Than To Make Us Fear For The End Of The World.

As A Poet I Hold The Most Archaic Values On Earth . . . The Fertility Of The Soil, The Magic Of Animals, The Power-vision In Solitude, The Terrifying Initiation And Rebirth, The Love And Ecstasy Of The Dance, The Common Work Of The Tribe. I Try To Hold Both History And The Wilderness In Mind, That My Poems May Approach The True Measure Of Things And Stand Against The Unbalance And Ignorance Of Our Times.

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