In honor of Gary Snyder’s 95th birthday today, we present a catalog offering an array of his amazing writing, including a number of new arrivals and books we’ve held for years. We wanted to scrounge together 108 items—a number that in Buddhist thought represents the 108 earthly temptations that one must pass on the way to enlightenment (a number that Snyder cheekily started to use for the limitation of his fine press books and broadsides). But we ran out of time. We’ve had to settle for 75 or so temptations. Rural Hours arguably got its start via an interest in Gary Snyder, and we’re still passionate about his stuff. He’s not just an important thinker, artist, and environmentalist, but he’s wonderful to collect because of his dedication through the years to independent and fine presses. And we would argue that his dedication is part and parcel with his larger philosophy.
Snyder is known for his lookouts and logging, his trail work, his early modernist and Asian influences, including his time in Japan. But in the mid-Sixties he turned toward what’s seen as a second phase of his career: an emphasis on indigeneity in North America and greater eco-activism. This coincided with his move back to the States, where Snyder made his home on the San Juan Ridge above the Yuba River in the Sierra foothills of California. He purchased the property with Allen Ginsberg in 1966 and moved there in 1968 with his wife Masa Uehara with the project of “digging in,” as he put, or "reinhabitation: moving back into a terrain that has been abused and half forgotten – and then replanting trees, dechannelizing streambeds, breaking up asphalt.” He named his homestead Kitkitdizze, the indigenous name for the tarweed abundant on this pine-and-oak property. This was old and ongoing gold country which had been treated poorly for over a century. Snyder pledged allegiance to it, not least in his poetry, in particular in Axe Handles (1983)—his attachment to this plot took a little time to manifest in his poetry.
Interestingly, this “digging in” coincided with greater activism, which is cleared bold in Turtle Island which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974. What’s the connection? In his 1992 essay “The Rediscovery of Turtle Island,” Snyder argues that “bioregionalism calls for commitment to this continent place by place in terms of its landforms, plant life, weather patterns, and season changes—its whole natural history before the net of political jurisdiction was cast over it.” He became interested in watersheds as opposed to statehoods, and noted that the project of finding “membership in a natural place” allowed him “to be critical of the United States without feeling that I wasn’t at home in North America.”
His wasn’t simply a regional impulse, then, but an attempt to consider simultaneously the near and the far. As Snyder declared in Practice of the Wild, “We seek the balance between cosmopolitan pluralism and deep local consciousness. We are asking how the whole human race can regain self-determination in place after centuries of having been disenfranchised by hierarchy and/or centralized power. Do not confuse this exercise with ‘nationalism’ which is exactly the opposite, the impostor, the puppet of the State, the grinning ghost of the lost community.”
Critic Timothy Gray notes that Snyder once described his homestead Kitkitdizze as a “‘node’ in the larger net of natural homesteads and camps.” This is a different kind of net than what’s offered by our traditional political jurisdictions, but it also entwines with those. “Life in the country for me is not a retreat,” Snyder explained in an interview only a few years after moving to Kitkitdizze. “It’s simply placing myself at a different point in the net, a different place in the network.”
This net or network metaphor is useful in thinking about the landscape that fine press represents, an alternate landscape to that of centralized publishing. In his trade books, Snyder has remained steadfastly independent, publishing with Don Allen’s Four Seasons Foundation and Grey Fox presses, transitioning to James Laughlin’s New Directions, ending up with Jack Shoemaker’s Counterpoint. But when one looks at the map of Snyder’s fine press publications, an even more plural, trans-local, democratic network ripples across the landscape. Along with dozen of presses in California, the nodes of this fine press web include Eugene, Ashland, and Portland, OR; La Vegas, NV; Cambridge, Richmond, Adams, Action MA; Port Townsend and Olympia. WA; Detroit, Grindstone City, and Grand Rapids, MI; Silverton CO, Galisteo and Albuquerque NM; Chicago; St. Paul MN, Kent OH; Brockport NY; Providence RI, Steelhead, BC; Hanover, NH; Boise and Kendrick Idaho. The reason for Snyder’s commitment to little presses and his appeal to printers becomes obvious in this light: fine press chapbooks and broadsides are handmade (hand set), small run, aesthetically attentive, attuned to place, collaborative, and often a fundraiser or a gift on the occasion of a reading, honoring both the poet and the attendees. All of this represents and fosters a “deep local consciousness.”
We’re excited to showcase this consciousness as we can. Most significantly we’re offering a collection of 60 Gary Snyder broadsides en bloc. We also have dug up an array of Ripraps and a full run of limited edition Fulcrums. There are also some interesting association copies to explore. We may keep adding to this catalog for a little while as we can to shore up some holes.
But most importantly: Happy Birthday, Gary Snyder. And thank you.
