Danger on Peaks: Poems (ISBN 1593760809)

Pure Transparancy of Blue:
Gary Snyder is America's greatest living poet.his keen, ever perfectly clear vison is based in the glint of rivers and the muted sheen of glistening rocks under jasmine colored waves, bountiful white clouds and spirit incandescent and meteoric.... He writes of concrete on highway 5, Toyota Tercels, and the animistic world of noble pines and bobcat scat..His Haikus are the best ever written...his narrative before certain poems is articulate, revealing and deep without any pretension...For instance: "If you want to view the world you live in climb a rocky mountain with a neat small peak. But the big snow peaks pierce the world of clouds and cranes, rest in the zone of five colored banners and writhing crackling dragons in veils of ragged mist and frost crystals, into a pure transparancy of blue." He knows the "Three Sisters". He has climbed into their deeper essence. He writes of today and of humanity, daily life, of commitment and courage and eating at fast food places...I have long admired his work and this is as good as Axe Handles and Regarding Wave...I have lived in the Pacific Northwest in my younger days..He almost alone, awakened me to its noble grandeaur....One of America's finest poets ever...

Have you ever noticed that Gray Snyder...:
...can be a little belittling and arrogant? I remember his character in 'The Dharma Bums' when he gives a beautiful yodel after reaching the top of a mountain. Kerouac later asks him to do it again, but Snyder says such a yodel is not ment to be heard by low landers. His sense of superiority is again on display in 'danger on peaks'. Again and again he makes observations while looking down his nose. Such as commenting that a lookout stop near Mt. St. Helens no longer attracts tourists 'once the dump trucks stopped'. Oh Gary, how it must pain you to be among us common folk. Surprizing, since you market yourself as a poet of the common folk. We can forgive poets like Pound and Elliot for their snobbishness. They were nuts by any general definition. But Snyder's poetry in the first person grates after time. He could take a cue from Robert Frost. When Frost wrote of 'swinging from birches' or out walking in the New England snow you never felt it was Frost really - some third party Frost was channeling. But with Snyder it's all about Snyder. He trys to be the new Walt Whitman but can't quite find the soul. Much of Whitman was forged from a gentle man serving in a horrible war. What did Snyder ever do, really? He writes about being a fire lookout here and working on a ship there as if he's just an 'every man'. When actually he's done as little real work as possible and mostly promoted the 'idea' of Gary Snyder - 'Zen Poet Beat Surviver Matured Master'. Read this book if you like. It's very nice actually. For Gary Snyder it probably won't get any better than this. As he says himself in the poem 'Waiting for a Ride' - 'most of my work, such as it is, is done'.

Amazing:
This collection of poetry is exactly what every collection should be: intelligent, well written, and entertaining. Every poem is carefully crafted by Snyder and can evoke a wide range of emotions that many modern poets miss out on. The only possibly downside (a tiny one) is that many of these poems are very close to being prose. A very good read on a wide variety of subjects. The best, in my opinion, is a toss-up between "Atomic Dawn" and "One Thousand Cranes".

Gary Synder's first collection of new poems in twenty years:
Danger On Peaks is Gary Synder's first collection of new poems in twenty years and begins with poems about his first ascent of Mt. St. Helens in 1945. Offering a body of verse in a diversity of styles, Synder's work was a 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and showcases a unique voice in contemporary American poetry. She Knew All About Art: She knew all about art -- she was fragrant, soft,/I rode to her fine stone apartment, hid the bike in the hedge./--We met at an opening, her lover was brilliant and rich,/first we would talk, then drift into long gentle love,/We always made love in the dark. Thirty years older than me.

Awful from beginning to end:
This collection of "poems" is embarrassingly bad from beginning to end. Little more than notes, the stuff would not be published if it weren't Snyder. He has done nothing since the Beats, and did very little back then. Why bother publishing him at all?