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

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To work on behalf of the wild is to restore culture
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stay together learn the flowers go light
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True affluence is not needing anything.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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In Western Civilization, our elders are books.
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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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O, ah! The awareness of emptiness brings forth a heart of compassion!
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Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility.
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You don't want to be victimized by your lesser talents.
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Thought is just an apprehension of touch.
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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.
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The mercy of the West has been social revolution the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void.
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A great poet does not express his or her self he expresses all of our selves.
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My Grandmother standing wordless fifteen minutes Between rows of loganberries, clippers poised in her hand.
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Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.
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What is any religion? A little ritual, a little superstition, and some magic. It's not a strictly spiritual affair it has psychological roles to fulfill. You might not want it to be a religion based on your own experience but that's like wanting to clean up your dreams
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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.
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Gratitude to the Great Sky who holds billions of stars - and goes yet beyond that - beyond all powers, and thoughts and yet is within us - Grandfather Space. The Mind is his Wife
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