Riprap; And, Cold Mountain Poems

Each man sweeps the things he hates Into the neighboring room; The coward does it with a sword, The brave man with a broom. --me

The great thing about Cold Mountain is that he is transparent to translators. Arguing the merits of one Cold Mountain translation against another is like comparing a Gudo Ishibashi 2.8 shakuhachi to a 2.9 Mujitsu shakuhachi by Ken LaCosse. Both flutes will get you "there." But the journey will be different. The same is true of Cold Mountain. Snyder is as good as Watson is a good as Red Pine is as good as Henricks. Or like Dogen translations... why sink a straw that floats on the water, when the moon itself rides in ripples beside the straw?

Amidst the poetry of the Sixties, Gary Snyder's early poems stood out as something very special, and are still very special. In contrast to the obscure and convoluted writings of an assortment of neurasthenic, super-sophisticated, and compulsive scribblers, types so totally and utterly wrapped up in themselves that they completely overlooked that insignificant thing hovering outside their window (ordinary folks call it the universe), and whose work goes unread because it is largely unreadable, Snyder's work came as a revelation.Here was a poet who was very, very different - a poet who, far from being totally wrapped up in himself, was instead wrapped up in the universe. He appeals to us because, being himself wholly in touch with reality, he helps us get back in touch with reality ourselves. Ego is put firmly in its place, opening up a space in which the myriad things can come forward and announce themselves.The secret of how Snyder was able to do this, of how he was able to bring us, not yet another of those obscure, tortured and anguished sensibilities who were and still are so thick on the ground, but who brought instead a sane and wholesome vision of the world, is all there in the very first poem of RIPRAP, 'Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout' :"Down valley a smoke haze / Three days heat, after five days rain / Pitch glows on the fir-cones / Across rocks and meadows / Swarms of new flies. // I cannot remember things I once read / A few friends, but they are in cities. / Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup / Looking down for miles / Through high still air" (p.9).Where did Snyder learn how to do this? The answer is that it could only have been in China. The poem is the perfect expression, in English, of that commonsensical attitude that grounds itself firmly in realities; that keeps ego firmly under control; that practises a reasonable, as opposed to an excessive, use of reason; and that is commonly found in the best Chinese and Zen poets. To translate Zen-man Han Shan, Snyder penetrated so deeply into the spirit of Han Shan that he succeeded in becoming a sort of American Han Shan himself. The result is a poetry not of coteries, of academic and intellectual circles, of super-sophisticated and pretentious Ivy League graduates, but poems that have real meaning and that can be read with understanding and enjoyment by anyoneThe poetry of RIPRAP and COLD MOUNTAIN, like the poetry of many Chinese and Japanese poets, is a wholesome poetry, a poetry that cleanses and refreshes the sensibility, and that transports us from the technoid madness of our own chaotic world to something more human and hence more meaningful.There's real sustenance for the spirit in these poems. They're like "drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup." Readers would be unwise to pass them by.

This book passes the test of time because of its taut poetry and insight into the link between Sndyer's environment in the Pacific Northwest and his inner landscape. The second part of the book is priceless. Snyder's Zen practice and skill as a writer and linguist make him eminently qualified to translate the words of the reclusive poet Han-Shan, whose poems ring true today. I have read other translations of Han-Shan but Snyder's is the best. Its paradoxes move us in our modern times just as they must have in early China.

Riprap lets us see the world with Snyder's vision back in the days when Kerouac was writing about him in the Dharma Bums. The clarity, straightforward diction, and simple lyricism that have continued to characterize his poetry are all here in these early poems from the fifties. Astounding visual quality. Life in the mountains, in Japan, on the high seas. Cold Mountain Poems are translations of Han Shan, Chinese Zen poet. Han Shan stands with John of the Cross in his ability to illuminate the spiritual path through lyric imagery. Snyder's crystalline translations reveal Han Shan to us face to face, today, not some old exotic hermit but a vital presence.