Axe Handles: Poems

One of Gary's great works.

My favorite Snyder book. This is a gift to a family friend who will love it.... Snyder is who Frost ought to have been... This book, like william stafford's poetry, is real and tangible and you can taste the subjects and drink them in and he helps you understand them... it is just a wonderful piece of work by one of america's great great poets.

Arrived quickly and matched the seller's description.

What can anyone say here about poet Gary Snyder? Intelligent, talented, insightful man. How to look at the world through a better lens.

Gary Snyder was actually the first poet I ever loved. In Axe Handles, we see him at his best: beautifully terse lines which ring true with a kind of serene clarity, complex and intuitive connections between everyday aspects of work, the land, animals, loved ones, the clarity of dreams, particular spaces at particular times (he'll often cite the location and the date from which the poem gets its inspiration) - all of it fitting together somehow, so that you go away with a wholesome feeling of the rustic and down to earth. I enjoy the way he mentally creates his world, and the markers he sets up to feel and experience the passage of time. If you are an urban dweller like me, you will soon realize the marked contrast between your world and Snyder's: his is situated alongside actual places, roads, trees, and is embodied by actual faces, stories, and hands on living. Read enough Snyder, and you will be pleasantly uprooted from your busy, day to day routine, and soon find yourself with fresh eyes in verdant land of symbols, seasons, person to person to land encounters with very little abstraction - it will be a sudden and long overdue breath of fresh air.

This is my favorite book of Gary Snyder's poetry, although I am a fan of his prose too. Every poem and even the order is solidly in his simple, profound style that does such a great job of observing the (often humorous) details of life and how they fit into a universe that makes just enough sense.