In Axe Handles Mr. Snyder reveals the roots of community in the family and explores the transmission of cultural values and knowledge.

"In making the handle of an axe by cutting wood with an axe the model is indeed near at hand." In exploring this axiom of Lu Ji's, Gary Snyder continues:

I am an axe

And my son a handle, soon

To be shaping again, model

And tool, craft of culture,

How we go on.

This is a collection of discovery, of insight, and of vision. These poems see the roots of community in the family, and the roots of culture and government in the community.

Formally, the 71 poems in Axe Handles range from lyrics to riddles to narratives. The collection is divided into three parts, called "Loops," "Little Songs for Gaia," and "Nets," each containing poems of disciplined clarity. Gary Snyder knows well the great power of silence in a poem, silence that allows the mind space enough to discover the magic of song.

Gary Snyder is the author of more than twenty collections of poetry and prose. Since 1970 he has lived in the watershed of the South Yuba River in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1975, Snyder has also been awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry and the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award. His 1992 collection, No Nature, was a National Book Award finalist, and in 2008 he received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Snyder is a poet, environmentalist, educator and Zen Buddhist.

PART ONE: LOOPS

3

(44)

Axe Handles

5

(2)

For/From Lew

7

(1)

River in the Valley

8

(2)

Among

10

(1)

On Top

11

(1)

Berry Territory

12

(2)

Bows to Drouth

14

(2)

The Cool Around the Fire

16

(2)

Changing Diapers

18

(1)

Beating the Average

19

(2)

Painting the North San Juan School

21

(2)

All in the Family

23

(1)

Fence Posts

24

(2)

So Old-

26

(2)

Look Back

28

(2)

Soy Sauce

30

(2)

Beetle Trails

32

(2)

Walking Through Myoshin-ji

34

(1)

Fishing Catching Nothing

35

(1)

At the Ibaru Family Tomb

36

(1)

Strategic Air Command

37

(1)

Eastward Across Texas

38

(1)

Working on the '58 Willys Pickup

39

(2)

Getting in the Wood

41

(2)

True Night

43

(4)

PART TWO: Little Songs for Gala

47

(12)

PART THREE: Nets

59

I

Walked Two Days in Snow

63

(2)

Geese Gone Beyond

65

(2)

Three Deer One Coyote Running in the Snow

67

(1)

White Sticky

68

(2)

Old Pond

70

(1)

24: IV: 40075, 3:30 PM

71

(1)

1: VI: 40077

72

(5)

II.

The Grand Entry

77

(2)

Under the Sign of Toki's

79

(2)

Talking Late with the Governor about the Budget

81

(2)

"He Shot Arrows..."

83

(1)

Arts Councils

84

(1)

"What Have I Learned..."

85

(4)

III.

A Maul for Bill and Cindy's Wedding

89

(1)

Alaska

90

(1)

Dillingham, Alaska, the Willow Tree Bar

91

(2)

Removing the Plate of the Pump

93

(1)

Glamor

94

(1)

Uluru Wild Fig Song

95

(6)

IV.

Money Goes Upstream

101

(2)

Breasts

103

(2)

Old Rotting Tree Trunk Down

105

(2)

For a Fifty-Year-Old Woman in Stockholm

107

(1)

Old Woman Nature

108

(2)

The Canyon Wren

110

(3)

For All

113

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