Observation of Snyder's Works

Theme(s)

Man vs. Nature – Separate Worlds

Human Wreckage – Effecting future generations

Spreading Nature to Others

Sample Selection of Snyder’s Works

It Pleases Pg. 44

Affluence Pg. 50

Ethnobotany Pg. 51

            Continuing my analysis of Snyder’s work, several reoccurring themes that were found in other sample selection poems appeared within the context. “It Pleases” is a passage regarding a large bird, soaring over the busy town of Washington, DC. Below the bird are thousands of tourist cars, a police officer, old white stone domes; the center of power, as Snyder states. Snyder makes a vivid depiction of what we as people view Washington, DC to be. We think of the tourist attractions, monuments, and other man-made beauty. Meanwhile, the nature behind what we have created and destroyed goes unnoticed as “the world does what it pleases.”

            “Affluence” portrays another one of Gary Snyder’s reoccurring themes throughout Turtle Island: human wreckage. The poem opens up by depicting a forestry scene with pine needles, limbs and twigs, and then draws the comparison to human wreckage by including several stumps in the image. “And this from logging twenty years ago . . . it was the logger’s cost, at lumber’s going rate then . . . now burn the tangles dowsing . . . paying the price somebody didn’t pay.” Like several of Snyder’s other works, the poem is describing how much humans are depleting the environment. Without safe environmental practices, our future generations will be in even deeper trouble.

            “Ethnobotany” by Gary Snyder, portrays a less pessimistic theme than the majority of the other works. This poem paints a vivid image of the “sour fresh inner oak-wood smell” of a splitting tree. Although Snyder includes human wreckage in this poem, he follows it up with the line “taste all, and hand the knowledge down.” In this sense, Snyder has a much more optimistic tone that we can learn from our mistakes. “Taste all” – observe our wrongdoings and “and hand the knowledge down” – prevent it from happening in the future.