Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems [Paperback]

Gary Snyder (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2003

Forty-five years ago, Gary Snyder’s first book of poems, Riprap, was published by Origin Press in a beautiful paperbound edition stitched Japanese-style. Around that time Snyder published his translations of Chinese poet Han-Shan’s Cold Mountain Poems in the sixth issue of the “Evergreen Review.” Thus was launched one of the most remarkable literary careers of the last century. It is a great gift for all readers to now have this seminal collection back in print.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"As early as the 1950s, before ecology became a household word, Snyder understood things about our civilization and economy that no one else was talking about, and he wrote about them with great authority and a sinewy line." -- Richard Tillinghast, The Nation

"His greatest strength-a quiet and profound elegance, an ability to write a simple phrase that seems to have been echoing through human consciousness for three or four thousand years." -- Lewis MacAdams, California Magazine

"Long ago staked his claim as one of America's finest poets...[An] unswerving integrity [is] present throughout the development of Snyder's poetic sensibility." -- Boston Herald

"The master of lucid meditation." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

"This poet's great gift has always been perfect visual clarity... and, needless to say, derives from Snyder's vision in the larger sense." -- Paul Berman, The Village Voice

Cold Mountain Poems: 1
Cold Mountain Poems: 10
Cold Mountain Poems: 11
Cold Mountain Poems: 12
Cold Mountain Poems: 13
Cold Mountain Poems: 14
Cold Mountain Poems: 15
Cold Mountain Poems: 16
Cold Mountain Poems: 17
Cold Mountain Poems: 18
Cold Mountain Poems: 19
Cold Mountain Poems: 2
Cold Mountain Poems: 20
Cold Mountain Poems: 21
Cold Mountain Poems: 22
Cold Mountain Poems: 23
Cold Mountain Poems: 24
Cold Mountain Poems: 3
Cold Mountain Poems: 4
Cold Mountain Poems: 5
Cold Mountain Poems: 6
Cold Mountain Poems: 7
Cold Mountain Poems: 8
Cold Mountain Poems: 9
Above Pate Valley
All Through The Rains
At Five A.m. Off The North Coast Of Sumatra
Cartagena
For A Far-out Friend
Goofing Again
Hay For The Horses
Higashi Hongwanji
Kyoto: March
The Late Snow & Lumber Strike Of The Summer Of Fifty-four
Mid-august At Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Migration Of Birds
Milton By Firelight
Nooksack Valley
Piute Creek
Praise For Sick Women
Riprap
The Sappa Creek
A Stone Garden
T-2 Tanker Blues
Thin Ice
Toji
Water
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder is the author of many volumes of poetry and essays, including Left Out in the Rain, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, Mountains and Rivers without End, and The Practice of the Wild. He teaches literature and wilderness thought at the University of California at Davis and lives with his family on the San Juan Ridge in the Sierra foothills. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (December 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593760159
• ISBN-13: 978-1593760151
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #801,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The book contains good early Snyder poems and fine translati, August 7, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Riprap; And, Cold Mountain Poems (Paperback)

This book passes the test of time because of its taut poetry and insight into the link between Sndyer's environment in the Pacific Northwest and his inner landscape. The second part of the book is priceless. Snyder's Zen practice and skill as a writer and linguist make him eminently qualified to translate the words of the reclusive poet Han-Shan, whose poems ring true today. I have read other translations of Han-Shan but Snyder's is the best. Its paradoxes move us in our modern times just as they must have in early China.

42 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup.", June 20, 2001

By 

tepi "tepi" - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Riprap; And, Cold Mountain Poems (Paperback)

Amidst the poetry of the Sixties, Gary Snyder's early poems stood out as something very special, and are still very special. In contrast to the obscure and convoluted writings of an assortment of neurasthenic, super-sophisticated, and compulsive scribblers, types so totally and utterly wrapped up in themselves that they completely overlooked that insignificant thing hovering outside their window (ordinary folks call it the universe), and whose work goes unread because it is largely unreadable, Snyder's work came as a revelation.

Here was a poet who was very, very different - a poet who, far from being totally wrapped up in himself, was instead wrapped up in the universe. He appeals to us because, being himself wholly in touch with reality, he helps us get back in touch with reality ourselves. Ego is put firmly in its place, opening up a space in which the myriad things can come forward and announce themselves.

The secret of how Snyder was able to do this, of how he was able to bring us, not yet another of those obscure, tortured and anguished sensibilities who were and still are so thick on the ground, but who brought instead a sane and wholesome vision of the world, is all there in the very first poem of RIPRAP, 'Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout' :

"Down valley a smoke haze / Three days heat, after five days rain / Pitch glows on the fir-cones / Across rocks and meadows / Swarms of new flies. // I cannot remember things I once read / A few friends, but they are in cities. / Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup / Looking down for miles / Through high still air" (p.9).

Where did Snyder learn how to do this? The answer is that it could only have been in China. The poem is the perfect expression, in English, of that commonsensical attitude that grounds itself firmly in realities; that keeps ego firmly under control; that practises a reasonable, as opposed to an excessive, use of reason; and that is commonly found in the best Chinese and Zen poets.

To translate Zen-man Han Shan, Snyder penetrated so deeply into the spirit of Han Shan that he succeeded in becoming a sort of American Han Shan himself. The result is a poetry not of coteries, of academic and intellectual circles, of super-sophisticated and pretentious Ivy League graduates, but poems that have real meaning and that can be read with understanding and enjoyment by anyone

The poetry of RIPRAP and COLD MOUNTAIN, like the poetry of many Chinese and Japanese poets, is a wholesome poetry, a poetry that cleanses and refreshes the sensibility, and that transports us from the technoid madness of our own chaotic world to something more human and hence more meaningful.

There's real sustenance for the spirit in these poems. They're like "drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup." Readers would be unwise to pass them by.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Luminous early poetry and translations by Poet Snyder, September 28, 1995

By A Customer

This review is from: Riprap; And, Cold Mountain Poems (Paperback)

Riprap lets us see the world with Snyder's vision back in the days when Kerouac was writing about him in the Dharma Bums. The clarity, straightforward diction, and simple lyricism that have continued to characterize his poetry are all here in these early poems from the fifties. Astounding visual quality. Life in the mountains, in Japan, on the high seas. Cold Mountain Poems are translations of Han Shan, Chinese Zen poet. Han Shan stands with John of the Cross in his ability to illuminate the spiritual path through lyric imagery. Snyder's crystalline translations reveal Han Shan to us face to face, today, not some old exotic hermit but a vital presence.