The Plowboy Interview

Image Gallery

GARY SNYDER:

Choosing Your Place-and Making a Stand!

Gary Snyder is no stranger to longtime readers of THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS°. In fact, his ecological broadside "Four Changes" actually opened MOTHER N0. 1! In later years, a quote from Gary's work graced our Let the Men & Women of Wisdom Speak in our tenth anniversary issue (No. 60), and one of his poems helped kick off our Fieldbook feature in No. 86.

Born in San Francisco on May 8, 1930, Snyder first came to national attention, ironically enough, as the model for the hero of another writer's book-the character Faphy Ryder in lack Kerouac's novel The Dharma Bums (1958). His own major publications were soon to follow, though, beginning with Riprap (1959), reaching a peak of sorts with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Turtle Island (which took its name from a Native American term for North America and was published in 1974), and culminatingfor the present, anyway-with Axe Handles, which was released by North Point Press early this year. (Ordering information for this fine collection of poems follows the interview.)

Through much of his work, Gary has functioned as a strong voice for the planet and-perhaps even more significant for the creatures of this earth that lack the means of representing themselves in the chambers of human politics. And in recent years his expression of such concerns has often been in the form of comments relating to a somewhat confusing-on the surface, at least-concept called bioregionalism.

To find out more about this movement (if, indeed, movement is even an appropriate term), MOTHER staffers Bruce Woods and Dave Schoonmaker met with Gary at the headquarters of his Berkeley publisher. In the following interview-excerpted from their discussions-you'll learn that bioregionalism can be as complex as the laying of a groundwork for a new "Green politics" for the United States, a movement that aims to rethink all of our arbitrary political boundaries, or as simple as the urgent message that it's time for all of us to discover where we are and to take responsibility for the soil, water, plants, birds, and beasts that share our locale. It's a sure bet that all aspects and interpretations of the bioregional concept won't appeal to every reader of this magazine, but it's just as likely that some aspect of what Gary Snyder has to say will touch each and every one of us.

PLOWBOY: Gary, you were among the first contemporary North American poets to address the problems of caring for the earth and the living creatures that share the planet with us. Can you tell me how your background, place of origin, and education may have pushed you in that direction?