Mountains and Rivers [with or] Without End
Snyder has his own sutra. It is called the Smokey the Bear Sutra, and it’s both fierce and hilarious: I have a beautiful copy in storage somewhere, in the beautiful Fudo Trilogy edition, that Snyder kindly inscribed for me, “Well met”.
It contains the following gloss on mountains and rivers:
My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain.
Science, mountains, weather patterns, rivers…
The poetry in Synder’s Mountains and Rivers has its rapids and still waters, its simple poetry and dazzling prose:
A day on the ragged North Pacific coast get soaked by whipping mist, rainsqualls tumbling, mountain mirror ponds, snowfield slush, rock-wash creeks, earfuls of falls, sworls of ridge-edge snowflakes, swift gravelly rivers, tidewater crumbly glaciers, high hanging glaciers, shore-side mud pools, icebergs, streams looping through the tideflats, spume of brine, distant soft rain drooping from a cloud,
sea lions lazing under the surface of the sea…
HD Thoreau:
Walden Pond is one of the great power centers of America Snyder mentions in the Smokey the Bear Sutra — and Snyder borrowed one of Thoreau’s lines for a poem of his own:
The sun is but a morning-star: each day represents a new opportunity to recover the nobility of life, another chance to turn aside from use to wonder.
Like Han Shan, Thoreau is among the ancestors. And as Thoreau’s own friend Emerson wrote, “The world is young: the former great men call to us affectionately.”
And what’s this about the former great men? Snyder goes way back before Emerson and Thoreau, and even Han Shan — he once said:
As a poet, I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the late Paleolithic; the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying intuition and rebirth; the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe.
Now:
Perhaps that’s what keeps him relevant, fresh. Once again in Mountains and Rivers Without End he writes:
Alive in the Sea of Information.
As are we all. How’s that for archaic meets MIT?
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Bryan Alexander:
April 16th, 2012 at 11:14 am
Splendid post, Charles. What a nicely played bead game, from the mountains to Cambridge.
Madhu:
April 16th, 2012 at 12:57 pm
How odd, Charles. I was going to add to our “vivid” conversation by discussing weather and the fascination for the eerie still calm before the storm that artists have.
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And you have Bronte, my comment was going to go all Will Ladislaw-Dorothea during the thunderstorm. Complained a lot about living in Boston but I loved those nor’easters, so long as they weren’t seriously destructive.
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Everytime I se Bryan Alexander comment, I think, ” time to get my old twitter microfiction out and continue the story.” I miss that mildly sad sack young character I created. She was such fun to write. Poor little written thing. It’s around here somewhere, I am sure of it….
Charles Cameron:
April 16th, 2012 at 6:36 pm
Thanks, Bryan.
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Madhu, I’d love to hear more about the calm & storm…
Carole Wilson:
June 13th, 2012 at 3:54 pm
Darling Soul Mate,
So interesting your epistle as I am working on a doc about Joshu Sasaki Roshi, 105 year old living Zen Master. Leonard Cohen’s teacher among many others. We shot an interview with Steve Sanfield, who lived with Roshi for four years when Roshi first came to America in 1962. Steve is 78, an old beat poet from the Bay area who knew all the characters you mention above.
A breath of fresh air, but still hardwired into my Tibetan Buddhist roots. Yet remember, “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.”
With great love and hope for you health and welfare.
xoxoxoxo
Charles Cameron:
June 14th, 2012 at 12:47 am
Darling back atcha, Carole!
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What a face:
I very much look forward to your film.