A Vision In Place: Gary Snyder's Poetics

Gary Snyder, poet-citizen of the Turtle Island, is one of the few American poets after Henry David Thoreau who have devoted their whole lifetime to practicing what they believe a human life ought to be. The poet is much concerned about the degradation of the whole living system of the earth. He holds that the environmental crisis is fundamentally a matter of beliefs and values, which, underneath the umbrella of civilization, urge people to accumulate material and extend political and economic power at the cost of long-range sustainability. With wild nature being his first and forever guru, Snyder has pursued a vision which integrates certain European traditions, Native American practices, Oriental cultures and ecological perspectives. This vision has not only allowed Snyder to create a bio-utopia of his own but enabled the writer always to be able to go back to his own place, where there is real work to do and real life to live.This thesis consists of six parts. The first part gives a general introduction to Snyder's life and works. Chapter One "An Ungrounded Place" mainly discusses what has made Snyder so devoted to his writing as the real work or the practice of life. Snyder hopes that his writing can help people reestablish a sense of home place which might have been lost for a long time. A poem titled "Mother Earth: Her Whales" will be analyzed and a critical voice about this particular poem will be taken into consideration. The last section of this chapter suggests that a poem which acts against the destructive power deserves the name of "eco-poem". Chapter Two "Axes with Handles" shows how Snyder has been inspired and influenced and how the poet has managed to form a vision of his own, which is neither western nor eastern, or both. In Chapter Three "A Turtle Island View", Snyder's vision in place is further discussed. The chapter is made up of four sections. With "The Long View", Snyder always sees his homeland and the whole world in a historically profound perspective; "bio-utopia" in Snyder's sense refers to "the Mind of the commons", which is wild and open enough to go beyond all the boundaries that can be named by human beingsalone; "No Nature" indicates that nature is actually where culture derives and wherehumans live together with nonhumans with neither party superior to the other; "AStep Backward" is important in leading one back to the real world and one's ownplace. Chapter Four discusses Snyder's art of poetry. As a poet, Snyder believes thatlanguage is biological and there is a pre-linguistic level of thought. He attempts towrite poetry that reaches back to that level. Poetry is to lead people out of the realm offorms and back to the wilderness both within and without the human mind. Poetryoccurs when and where the poet meets the ever-mysterious "it". In his own way,Snyder forms a "New Nature Poetics", which is both aesthetic and ethical. It callsupon each individual to make a sincere commitment to the place they belong to. The"Concluding" focuses on the poet's practice on the Turtle Island. Snyder's poeticpractice suggests to every ecocritic that ecocriticism is not just a critical theory, but apractice of wild life. Snyder's practice in place helps gain for his writing a sense ofhope, optimism and confidence about the future, which in turn inspires us, his readers,to love our earth, our place, and our home.