The Cyles

Gary Snyder’s poems represent a totally different aspect to the Beats. Compared with Allen Ginsberg’s focus on the holy nature found in the gutters, Snyder finds his holiness within nature. For me, this focus on the more naturalistic side to the human experience was a huge relief. Even though all of the Beats writers we have read so far dealt with some form of freedom, Snyder raises the idea of freedom being connected with nature. Snyder deals with nature through a cyclical image.

                The very first poem “Axe Handles” demonstrates Snyder’s emphasis on the passage of knowledge through the generations. The narrator speaks of his teachers being an axe, himself being an axe, and that his son will soon be an axe. The image of the axe also helps to put emphasis on the idea of the knowledge being passed down as being important for one’s own life. The axe is a useful tool that allows individuals to do many different jobs. The act of correlating the person with the tool gives the impression that from gaining this ancient wisdom a person will become a successful individual.

As well as providing an image of a successful person, Snyder’s representation of the passage of knowledge as a way to pass on the history of the people itself. Snyder’s last line in “Axe Handles” is “how we go on.” He refers to the act of each coming generation will soon turn into an axe and gain coveted wisdom.  In addition to being the representation of a human tradition, the child in the poem serves as a progression of the human culture as Snyder says: the “craft of culture.”

Snyder’s theme of a cyclical wisdom is also seen in his poem “Changing Diapers” and “For/From Lew.” The theme of passing knowledge from one generation onto the next is seen through the eyes of another father. The father of the infant boy describes how he changes his son’s diaper and a poster of Geronimo.  Geronimo serves a masculine authority within the poem. In the last stanza, Snyder says he, his son, and Geronimo are men. Geronimo stood as a man of principle. In “For/From Lew,” Snyder holds a conversation with a deceased friend who perished from a seemingly self-inflicted gunshot wound. The ghost tells the narrator that he has come back to “teach the children about the cycles.” This emphasis on children learning the life cycles illuminates how important it was to Snyder that the younger generation learns about the world, as Snyder says: “That’s what it’s all about.”

In “Old Woman Nature” Snyder explores the relationship between Nature and the actual cycles of life.  In this poem Snyder places Nature as the matriarchal figure who takes care of others. When the poem first starts, Old Mother Nature is described as having grotesque things such as a “bag of bones” and “fox scat with hair and tooth in it.” Then at the end the narrator remarks about Mother Nature making soup. Soup as a symbol is usually associated with getting better, prospering, or care giving. The two images of Mother Nature that Snyder present help to represent the dichotomy between the cycle of death and birth, as well as Nature being the provider along with the usurper of life.