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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
Different
Kinds
Writing
Tradition
Kind
Poetry
Builder
Like
Read
Wood
People
Use
Wanting
Write
Woods
Running
Findings
Anything
Finding

More quotes by Gary Snyder

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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.
Gary Snyder
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Having a place means that you know what a place means...what it means in a storied sense of myth, character and presence but also in an ecological sense...Integrating native consciousness with mythic consciousness
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stay together learn the flowers go light
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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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The best thing you can do for the planet is to stay home.
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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.
Gary Snyder
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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
Gary Snyder
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All that we did was human, stupid, easily forgiven, Not quite right.
Gary Snyder
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Why should the peculiarities of human consciousness be the narrow standard by which other creatures are judged?
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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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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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
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
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Knowing where and who are intimately linked.
Gary Snyder
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To work on behalf of the wild is to restore culture
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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I try to hold both history and wilderness in mind, that my poems may the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.
Gary Snyder
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Clambering up the Cold Mountain path, The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on: The long gorge choked with scree and boulders, The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass. The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain The pine sings, but there's no wind. Who can leap the world's ties And sit with me among the white clouds?
Gary Snyder
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My Grandmother standing wordless fifteen minutes Between rows of loganberries, clippers poised in her hand.
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