Snyder, Gary, 1930-....

Poet, essayist, translator, Zen Buddhist, environmentalist, and teacher, Gary Snyder is considered one of the most significant environmental writers of the twentieth century and a central figure in environmental activism.

Gary Snyder (1930- ), poet, essayist, translator, Zen Buddhist, environmentalist, lecturer, and teacher, is considered one of the most significant environmental writers of the twentieth century. Snyder has written more than twenty books of poetry and prose including: Riprap (1959), Myths & Texts (1960), Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems (1965), A Range of Poems (1966), The Back Country (1967), Earth House Hold: Technical Notes & Queries for Fellow Dharma Revolutionaries (1969), Regarding Wave (1970), Turtle Island (1974), The Old Ways (1977), The Real Work: Interviews & Talks, 1964-1979 (1980), Axe Handles (1983), Passage Through India (1983), Left Out in the Rain: New Poems 1947-1985 (1986), The Practice of the Wild (1990), No Nature: New and Selected Poems (1992), A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds, New and Selected Prose (1995), Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996), The Gary Snyder Reader (1999), The High Sierra of California (2002), Look Out: A Selection of Writings (2002), Danger on Peaks: Poems (2004), and Back on the Fire: Essays (2007). From 1986-2002, he served as a faculty member in the Department of English at the University of California, Davis, where he was instrumental in founding the "Nature and Culture" program (1993), an undergraduate academic major for students of society and the environment. Recognition of Snyder's achievements includes the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his book Turtle Island, his appointment to the California Arts Council (1975-1979), and his induction into both the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1987) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993). He also received the Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1997) and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2008).

Gary Snyder was born on May 8, 1930 in San Francisco, California. He was raised in Washington and Oregon on small farms and held a variety of jobs, as logger, seaman, fire-look-out and trail crew worker for the U.S. Forest Service. He received his degree in literature and anthropology from Reed College and did graduate work in linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, where he pursued his interests in Asian thought and languages. He served as a member of the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964. During the 1950s, he became involved with the Beat movement in San Francisco, and later, when he moved to Japan, he was involved with Zen Buddhism. Both of these involvements have had a very characteristic influence on his poetry. Snyder has received a number of honors and awards--among them a Pulitzer Prize for his poetry collection, Turtle Island (1974). His poetry collections include Riprap (1959), Myths & Texts (1960), The Back Country (1967), Regarding Wave (1969), Turtle Island and Axe Handles (both 1983). (1980).

Born May 8, 1930, in San Francisco, Gary Snyder spent most of his youth in Washington State and Oregon, where he received his BA in anthropology at Reed College, Portland, in 1951. At Berkeley, he studied Oriental languages from 1953-1956, during which time Shandel Parks introduced him to poets Kenneth Rexroth, Shunryon Suzuki and Philip Whalen, among others. He was also associated with Beat writers including Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Snyder left Berkeley in 1956 for Japan where he studied Zen Bhuddism. For the next twelve years Snyder alternated between California and Japan before settling back in California in 1968. Snyder's first book of poems, "Riprap," was published in 1959. Since then he has published 17 other works of poetry and prose and won numerous literary prizes including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1979-1970), a Bollingen Foundation Fellowship (1966-1969), The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for "Turtle Island" (1974), and the Bollingen Prize for Poetry for "Mountains and Rivers Without End" (1996).

Gary Snyder is an American poet.

Poet.

Lois (Wilkie) Snyder Hennessy was born in Washington State and married Harold Alton Snyder. They had two children, one of whom was Gary Snyder, born in 1930 in San Francisco.

Gary Snyder earned his B.A. from Reed College in anthropology and literature in 1951, attended Indiana University, then studied Oriental languages from 1953 to 1956 at the University of California at Berkeley. He married Alison Gass in 1950 (divorced, 1951); married Joanne Kyger (also a poet) in 1960 (divorced, 1964); married Masa Uehara, August 6, 1967 (divorced); married Carole Koda, April 28, 1991. Kai and Gen are children from his third marriage. He worked as a seaman, logger, trail crew member, and forest lookout (1948 to 1956). Since 1959, he has been a poet and translator. He was a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley from 1964 to 1965. From 1985 to the present, he has been a professor at the University of California at Davis.

Biography

Born May 8, 1930, in San Francisco, Gary Snyder spent most of his youth in Washington State and Oregon, where he received his BA in anthropology at Reed College, Portland, in 1951. He studied Oriental languages at U.C. Berkeley from 1953 to 1956; while at Berkeley, Shandel Parks introduced him to poets Kenneth Rexroth, Shunryon Suzuki and Philip Whalen, among others. During this time he also associated with Beat writers including Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Snyder left Berkeley in 1956 for Japan where he studied Zen Bhuddism. For the next twelve years Snyder alternated between California and Japan before settling back in California in 1968.

Snyder's first book of poems, Riprap, was published in 1959. Since then he has published 17 other works of poetry and prose and won numerous literary prizes including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1969-70), a Bollingen Foundation Fellowship (1966-1969), the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Turtle Island (1974) and the Bollingen Prize for Poetry for Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996).

Biography

Gary Snyder (1930- ), poet, essayist, translator, Zen Buddhist, environmentalist, lecturer, and teacher, is considered one of the most significant environmental writers of the twentieth century.

Snyder has written more than twenty books of poetry and prose including: Riprap (1959), Myths & Texts (1960), Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems (1965), A Range of Poems (1966), The Back Country (1967), Earth House Hold: Technical Notes & Queries for Fellow Dharma Revolutionaries (1969), Regarding Wave (1970), Turtle Island (1974), The Old Ways (1977), The Real Work: Interviews & Talks, 1964-1979 (1980), Axe Handles (1983), Passage Through India (1983), Left Out in the Rain: New Poems 1947-1985 (1986), The Practice of the Wild (1990), No Nature: New and Selected Poems (1992), A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds, New and Selected Prose (1995), Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996), The Gary Snyder Reader (1999), The High Sierra of California (2002), Look Out: A Selection of Writings (2002), Danger on Peaks: Poems (2004), and Back on the Fire: Essays (2007) .

From 1986-2002, he served as a faculty member in the Department of English at the University of California, Davis, where he was instrumental in founding the "Nature and Culture" program (1993), an undergraduate academic major for students of society and the environment.

Recognition of Snyder's achievements includes the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his book Turtle Island, his appointment to the California Arts Council (1975-1979), and his induction into both the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1987) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993). He also received the Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1997) and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2008).

For a more extensive biography of Gary Snyder, see the biography in the Gary Snyder Papers finding aid.

Biography:

Biographical Narrative

Joann Louise Cohn (b. ca. 1930-) attended high school in Portland, Oregon during the mid to late 1940s. Cohn and Gary Snyder (1930-) became friends in 1946 when they were both teenagers. They sent each other letters and poems when one or the other left Portland for vacation, summer camp, or later college. Cohn graduated from Stanford in 1952. She received a Masters degree in Library Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1955. Cohn married Robert E. Cazden, and the couple and their children lived for many years in Lexington, Kentucky. Robert Cazden was a professor of Library Science at the University of Kentucky.

In 1942, Gary Snyder and his family moved to Portland, Oregon from a small farm near Seattle, Washington. During his high school years, Snyder held a number of part-time jobs including working at a camp on Spirit Lake in Washington and as a copy boy for the Portland Oregonian . He was also an avid mountain climber and hiker. In 1947, Snyder graduated from Lincoln High School and enrolled at Reed College. He graduated from Reed with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Anthropology in 1951. Gary Snyder, influential poet, essayist, translator, Zen Buddhist, environmentalist, lecturer, and teacher, has written more than twenty books of poetry and prose including his forty-year work Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996) and Turtle Island for which he won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.