Gary Snyder
Here’s a pioneering multimedia clip with Will, circa 1996, when I was Editor at CNET. We liked to meet at San Franciso’s Zuni Cafe to catch up.
Now Will (the grandson of William Randolph Hearst) has a film venture called San Simeon Films that is going to release a documentary on our county’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet Gary Snyder in May. Called “The Practice of the Wild,” it is produced by Will and writer and poet Jim Harrison.
I’ve become acquainted with Gary since we moved here, and he’s a class act. Gary, as many of you know, is refreshingly down to earth. We’ve had some thought-provoking conversations.
“This film, borrowing its name from one of Snyder’s most eloquent non-fiction books, revolves around a life-long conversation between Snyder and his fellow poet and novelist Jim Harrison,” according to the film’s Facebook page.
“These two old friends and venerated men of American letters converse while taking a wilderness trek along the central California coast in an area that has been untouched for centuries.
“They debate the pros and cons of everything from Google to Zen koans. The discussions are punctuated by archival materials and commentaries from Snyder friends, observers, and intimates who take us through the ‘Beat’ years, the years of Zen study in Japan up to the present — where Snyder continues to be a powerful spokesperson for ecological sanity and bio-regionalism.”
Here’s a trailer from the documentary, which will be shown at the S.F. Film Festival but will undoubtedly make its way up here:
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I first met Gary Snyder at a week-long men’s conference that took place at a campground in the woods outside of Mendocino about twenty years ago. I was impressed with his simple, unaffected presence. Nothing pretentious about him at all. I still remember being amazed at the funky old sedan he drove from east to west across the state from Nevada City to the north coast.
This conference was one of those offshoots of poet Robert Bly’s “mythopoetic men’s movement.” Bly didn’t make it to this particular event, but his friend James Hillman, the Jungian psychologist, was there, along with storyteller Michael Meade, and West African tribal elder, Malidoma Some (pronounced “so-may”).
I still have the complete set of audio tapes (gathering dust in the closet) from that week of lectures and poetry. I also wrote a long essay about that experience that I never published (maybe it’s time to dust that off too).
Thank you. Wonderful film. Gary, Gary and friends, Gary reading…
I studied with Arthur Link, a Taoist scholar and others at the University of BC 70′s. Was aware of Gary’s poetry sensitive matter of fact,I thought and then danced on travels,painting, union jobs,3-3-5 years in japan, teaching certificate, japanese wife, returns to BC, son in high school,writing, a sort of invisible immigrant in the vicinty of what one could call a hometown significant once as a meeting place for my mom and dad, indian land. Last year, I read ‘The practice of the wild’. Gary’s poetry now seems to me more than simply sensitive and matter of fact, more like a friend, a line sent to an older japanese friend in Shikoku
” four years of understanding, a river stone, to reap what we have sown ”
Bill