Quote

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.

Gary Snyder

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Gary Snyder
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: May 8
Environmentalist
Poet
Trade Unionist
Translator
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Gary Snyder
Running
Findings
Anything
Finding
Different
Kinds
Writing
Tradition
Kind
Poetry
Builder
Like
Read
Wood
People
Use
Wanting
Write
Woods

More quotes by Gary Snyder

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Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility.
Gary Snyder
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Knowing where and who are intimately linked.
Gary Snyder
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Revolutionary consciousness is to be found among the most ruthlessly exploited masses: animals, trees, water, air, grasses
Gary Snyder
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After weeks of watching the roof leak I fixed it tonight by moving a single board
Gary Snyder
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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.
Gary Snyder
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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.
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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.
Gary Snyder
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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.
Gary Snyder
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stay together learn the flowers go light
Gary Snyder
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In Western Civilization, our elders are books.
Gary Snyder
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There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work. And those who stay clean, just appreciate things. At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea.
Gary Snyder
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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.
Gary Snyder
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The other side of the sacred is the sight of your beloved in the underworld, dripping with maggots.
Gary Snyder
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The best thing you can do for the planet is to stay home.
Gary Snyder
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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.
Gary Snyder
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When making an axe handle the pattern is not far off.
Gary Snyder
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All that we did was human, stupid, easily forgiven, Not quite right.
Gary Snyder
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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.
Gary Snyder
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Thought is just an apprehension of touch.
Gary Snyder
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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.
Gary Snyder