Customer Reviews

Danger on Peaks

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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...

If you've ever enjoyed ANY of Gary Snyder's poetry, then get Danger on Peaks. His first collection of new poems in 20 years, it's elegant and beautiful and meaningful and musical. I read a favorable review of this book in the NY Times, but wasn't prepared for how good it really was. I've been reading it in bed at night, just opening it here and there, and it's a delight. Language has been honed down to essentials-the poet's craft is being mastered here. The poems are tight and taut and finely-crafted-distilled to their essence. What really resonates with me are his experiences in the outdoors, many of the same things I feel but never articulate: trees, mountains, creeks, bobcats, sunsets- awe at the wonders of our planet. But that's just one level of the things going on in this book. It's also a summing-up of 60 years of Gary's life so far, so it's written in variety of styles. This is a wonderful little book. Published by Shoemaker Hoard.

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".

If you've never read Gary Snyder's poetry, this is a fabulous starting point; if you have, you'll be amazed at the depth and personal nature of many of these poems. Synder has deserved a bigger audience for such a long time, and this is the book that I hope will gain him wider acclaim. Highly recommended.

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.

Gary Snyder's Danger on Peaks is both a surprise and a pleasure: surprising since the Pulitzer Prize winning poet spent thirty years on his last work "Mountains and Rivers without End" which was published in 1996, leading many to suspect it might be awhile before another Snyder work would be available, and a pleasure because the unexpected is sometimes most satisfying.

Released in September 2004, Danger on Peaks is a compilation of prose and poetry, derived largely from Snyder's personal journals and notes. The book deals thematically with four events--the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945, the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in 1980, the destruction of the great Buddha in Bamiyan near Kabul Afghanistan in March 2001 and the destruction of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The bombing of Hiroshima and Mt. St. Helens are tied together in Snyder's experience since he had just descended from a Saint Helens climb when he learned the bomb had been dropped. Nature wrecked a powerful blow to the pristine beauty of Saint Helens some forty years later...There is a disquieting undertone to our tenure here on earth. Snyder describes with Zen-like precision trends in nature and man that leave one with an uneasy feeling--destruction is part of our world.

Having the opportunity to hear Snyder read from this work, I came to realize that the lines of my own life blend so thoroughly with his descriptions, I cannot separate the writing, the places and my direct experience. The places he describes from his years in the Pacific Northwest are my own childhood haunts and his prose drawn from California I know still more intimately. Deftly capturing time, place and the mood of a natural world appears a slight of hand for Snyder.

In Danger on Peaks there is a strong undercurrent of Oriental feeling, partly expressed by the use of haibun, a lesser used form consisting of prose followed by a haiku or short, often ironic or contemplative poem. Snyder assumes the role of an impartial, and sometimes, curiously amused, observer of events described with sparse language. The collection of writings can be taken separately, or treated as a cycle. Either way, these reflections are both deeply subjective and universal -- the gift of a poet.

"This present moment
that lives on

to become

long ago."

from Danger on Peaks


After the reading, Snyder took questions. A young man asked him "Is Buddhism useful?" Snyder responds with twinkling eyes and an impish smile, "No, it is more than that, it's beautifully useless."


Born in 1930, Gary Snyder is one of original Beat poets. Recognition includes the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and finalist for National Book Award in 1992. Professor Emeriti in English at UC Davis, Gary Snyder lives in the watershed of the South Yuba River of the Sierra Nevada.

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?

...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'.