A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds : New and Selected Prose Hardcover – January 1, 1995

Gary Snyder, one the Beat Poets is still able to pull me in and hold me in what ever space he occupies. This book, a collection of essays draws on a long history of environmental stories and poems, and contains one of my favorites "The Smokey the Bear Sutra" This is the essence of Gary Snyder, funny, pointed and stick in your mind forever!

Interesting

I bought this book, along with the poetry collection, No Nature, to gain an insight into the work of Gary Snyder, someone I had often seen quoted, but had never read at first hand. Snyder is perhaps best known as a west coast 'nature' poet, a fellow traveller of the 'beat generation', but he is also a prominent Buddhist, bioregional visionary and literary scholar. To judge from this book he is, moreover, an accomplished and eloquent essayist. The essays presented here, articles, reviews, talks and what might loosely be called manifestos, come mainly from the 70s to the 90s and span the breadth of Snyder's interests. Arranged in three sections, Ethics, Aesthetics and Watersheds, Snyder's writing manages to be poetic, religious, political and compelling at all times. Having read this book I feel inspired to read more, I'll try The Practice of the Wild next (more prose), followed by Turtle Island (poetry for which Snyder won the Pulitzer Prize). For anyone concerned to cultivate a humane relationship with the more-than-human world, Snyder is a surefooted guide.

Wonderful book.

Snyder's wise essays are well written and, more importantly, so luminously right in outlining a humble way for us humans to think differently about the world and our place in it, in such a way as to make co-habitation and co-operation between ourselves and other life forms not only possible but enriching. . Some essays in this collection are seminal for any reader interested in literature and ecology.