Danger on Peaks Poems

by Snyder, Gary

• ISBN13: 9781593760410
• ISBN10: 1593760418
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781619024052
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-08-05
• Publisher: Counterpoint

Summary

When first published in 2004, Danger on Peaks was the poet's first new collection of poems in twenty years. Perhaps his most personal, autobiographical collection, it begins with the young poet ascending Mt. St. Helens in 1945, a climb accidentally timed with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was 15 years old. Almost sixty years later, after the great Buddhas at Bamiyan Valley were bombed and with the victims of the World Trade Center also "turned to dust," the poet composed a prayer while at Short Grass Temple in Senso–ji, a pilgrim on the path of Kannon, Goddess of Mercy.



This remarkable collection was greeted with broad praise, and as Julia Martin proclaimed, "Moving between relative and absolute ways of seeing, [Snyder] responds to the experience of global conflict and personal pain by reminding readers of the continuity of wildness, affirming the value of art, and invoking an ancient practice of wisdom and compassion."

Author Biography

Gary Snyder is the author of sixteen 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 and a finalist for the National Book Award in 1992, he has been awarded the Bollingen Poetry Prize and the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award

Table of Contents

Mount St. Helens
The Mountain	p. 5
The Climb	p. 7
Atomic Dawn	p. 9
Some Fate	p. 10
1980: Letting Go	p. 11
Blast Zone	p. 13
To Ghost Lake	p. 16
Pearly Everlasting	p. 19
Enjoy the Day	p. 21
Yet Older Matters
Brief Years	p. 25
Glacier Ghosts	p. 35
Daily Life
What to Tell, Still	p. 41
Strong Spirit	p. 43
Sharing an Oyster With the Captain	p. 45
Summer of '97	p. 47
Really the Real	p. 50
Ankle-deep in Ashes	p. 52
Winter Almond	p. 53
Mariano Vallejo's Library	p. 55
Waiting for a Ride	p. 56
Steady, They Say
Doctor Coyote When He Had a Problem	p. 59
Claws/Cause	p. 60
How Many?	p. 61
Loads on the Road	p. 62
Carwash Time	p. 63
To All the Girls Whose Ears I Pierced Back Then	p. 64
She Knew All About Art	p. 65
Coffee, Market, Blossoms	p. 66
In the Santa Clarita Valley	p. 67
Almost Okay Now	p. 68
Sus	p. 69
Day's Driving Done	p. 70
Snow Flies, Burn Brush, Shut Down	p. 71
Icy Mountains Constantly Walking	p. 72
For Philip Zenshin Whalen	p. 73
For Carole	p. 74
Steady, They Say	p. 75
Dust in the Wind
Gray Squirrels	p. 79
One Day in Late Summer	p. 80
Spilling the Wind	p. 81
California Laurel	p. 82
Baking Bread	p. 83
One Empty Bus	p. 84
No Shadow	p. 85
Shandel	p. 86
Night Herons	p. 87
The Acropolis Back When	p. 88
The Emu	p. 89
The Hie Shrine and the "One-Tree" District	p. 91
Cormorants	p. 92
To Go	p. 93
One Thousand Cranes	p. 94
For Anthea Corinne Snyder Lowry	p. 96
The Great Bell of the Gion	p. 97
After Bamiyan
After Bamiyan	p. 101
Loose on Earth	p. 103
Falling from a Height, Holding Hands	p. 104
Senso-ji	p. 105
Envoy	p. 107
Notes	p. 109
Thanks	p. 111
Acknowledgments	p. 112
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