Left Out in the Rain - by Gary Snyder (Paperback)

About the Book

Inspired by the ancient Chinese proverb, "There's nothing you can own that can't be left out in the rain," this collection charts the journeys of the poet from 1947 to 1985. This book is unique among Gary Snyder's numerable works, and the poems contained here are as broad in style as the compilation is in timeframe. With a new introduction by the author, "Left Out in the Rain" captures the evolution of the poet and the man.
Readers will travel with Snyder from the American West to the Far East. From Berkeley to Kyoto, his imagery provides insight into the natural world as well as the human experience. With the span of a few words, Snyder can reveal a universe and then two pages later deftly handle a villanelle. Sensual, sardonic, meditative, epigrammatic, formalist--whatever the tone or structure, these poems all bear the indelible stamp of a master. Always evocative, they remind us why Snyder is one of our most heralded and beloved contemporary poets.

Book Synopsis

"The reading is something like archeology, sifting the layers that have built up over the years to find the source of a familiar voice . . . Left Out in the Rain shows us the footsteps in the wet meadow grass." --Los Angeles Times

"A fascinating case study and verse autobiography of a man who long ago staked his claim as one of America's finest poets." --Boston Herald

When Gary Snyder was in his twenties working as a forester and logger, one of the old loggers told him, "If you're gonna work these woods, don't want nothing that can't be left out in the rain."

Borrowing the phrase, Left Out in the Rain charts the journeys of the poet from 1947 to 1985. From the mountains and shores of the Pacific Northwest to the city streets of San Francisco, New York, and Kyoto, Snyder's reflections are as much about the human experience as they are about the environment that encompasses it.

Sensual, sardonic, meditative, epigrammatic, formalist--whatever the subject, tone, or structure, these poems all bear the indelible stamp of a master. A villanelle for Finnish folklore, riffs on the neo-formalist poems trendy in the 1950s, a sestina on the philosophical dilemmas of anthropology and linguistics, a transformation of the third century BC Daoist essay "Discourse on Swords" into a satire on contemporary warlike administrations and governments--the experiments in this collection place Snyder among the most diverse of contemporary poets.

Left Out in the Rain means to include items carefully chosen to outlast the elements and remain useful for years. In his new preface to this edition, Snyder notes, "This complicated gathering of many poems, tight and loose together is like an understory ecosystem of the Old Growth. It needs rain."

On the wooded coast,

eating oysters

Looking off toward

China and Japan

"If you're gonna

work these woods

Don't want nothing

That can't be

left out in the rain--"

Review Quotes

"The reading is something like archeology, sifting the layers that have built up over the years to find the source of a familiar voice ...

About the Author

Gary Snyder is the author of more than twenty collections of poetry and prose. Since 1970 he has lived in the watershed of the South Yuba River in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1975, Snyder has also been awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry and the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award. His 1992 collection, No Nature, was a National Book Award finalist, and in 2008 he received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Snyder is a poet, environmentalist, educator and Zen Buddhist.