The Practice of the Wild

by Gary Snyder

Book Overview

In 10 captivatingly meditative pieces - including a new, previously unpublished essay - Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and writer Gary Snyder explores the ideas of Buddhism, wildness and the lessons that can be learnt from nature and the planet. First published in 1990, these essays stand as the mature centrepiece of Snyder's work and thought and are widely accepted as one of the central 20th century texts on the interaction of nature and culture.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 158243638X
• ISBN13: 9781582436388
• Release Date: August 2010
• Publisher: Counterpoint LLC
• Length: 205 Pages
• Weight: 0.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Live it!

I recently reread this collection of essays from Gary Snyder and reaffirmed my view that of all the nature writers out there, Snyder remains among our most lucid and insightful philosophers and, most importantly, practitioners of wilderness thought. I would describe the essays in this collection as "thick and rich," thoughtfully crafted from decades of experience, confidently and clearly asserted, and skillfully argued by a scholar of the world. Snyder is conveying knowledge gained through direct experience. As such the essays are small lessons of instruction and guidance for the age-old question "how should I live?" The how, according to Snyder, is accomplished by becoming native to one's place, seeking out what is good, wild, and free, and paying attention to the mystery that pervades all. Kyle Gardner, author of Medicine Rock Reflections

Wonderful Exploration of Nature

This is a wonderful discussion of the concept of nature, delving back into ancient Chinese and Japanese concepts of nature. Snyder defines what nature has meant through history and what it means today to be losing it.

what a life he led

In much the same way as other reviewers I found Gary Snyder's book "Practice of the Wild" a very enjoyable read, I was originally pointed to it through the amazing work of Jack Turner's "The Abstract Wild" where he refered to it. Although nowhere near as intense or so purely full of power as Turner's book it is fluid and poetic. One of the first things that strikes you is Snyder's astonishing grasp of just about anything, his knowledge of foreign languages is acute, the width of understanding boggles the mind. It must also be remembered that he spent some years in Japan studying as a Zen monk, this would of course have introduced him to Japanese and through it Chinese characters, poetry etc. Snyder seems a remarkable man, this book as well as illuminating the human condition and its need for true wildness, not in the ordinary sense of the term but as native peoples perceive it or rather live it, is a kind of autobiography, maybe I should say a telling of the story of Snyder himself. You become intimately connected to his life, which is really quite incredible, the sort of life where he could no longer say in old age that "I never did what I wanted to", Snyder has really lived, a lumberjack, a monk, an anthropologist, poet etc etc. The book is interspersed with scientific detail of the living world and then up comes a very poetic passage somehow interconnected without one feeling it is incoherent as he slips from poetic to hard science. What a life he has lived, what experience that simply cannot be ignored, "The Practice of the Wild" is written by someone who must be heard, whose message is human in every way, an ecologist, conservationist, logger, rancher. Too bad other people : politicians, law makers, company executives etc etc haven't lived like this, maybe their own similar experience could really change the world, maybe through this book they will decide to live at least in more than an abstract way when it comes to the natural world.

A beautiful collection from a national treasure

When asked to recommend one book for young people, writer Jim Harrison picked "The Practice of the Wild" for its poetic sanity. I read Snyder's unpretentious collection while commuting on the train every morning one summer into downtown Chicago. The epiphanies came fast and furious as I sped through the city's West Side. The wisdom of Snyder's thinking is that he doesn't blindly differentiate between the "human world" and "wilderness"--people bad, nature good--but helps us see the beauty in everything. Like his poetry, Snyder's prose is funny and illuminating, capturing the rough texture of the world. "The Practice of the Wild" is a treasure.

a challenge to become native to your place...

Snyder's "The Practice of the Wild" is an exciting challenge to all of us to reconnect through myth, song, stories, culture, to the places we live and take for granted. It is accessible, fun, and enlightening. Snyder questions basic assumptions that we have, and examines the idea that listening to the land and its spirits will help us develop a new ethic. "It is appropriate to feel loyalty to a given glacier; it is advisable to investigate the whole water cycle; and it is rare and marvelous to know that glaciers do not always flow and that mountains are always walking." Tying together science, politics, and poetry, Snyder has asked each of us to discover what it is about our self that yearns to be whole, and points out that this wholeness can come through the wild.