Gary Snyder, Zen Poet

Reading Dana Goodyear's profile of Gary Snyder in The New Yorker this week, I was struck by the following quote from Snyder:

"When people tell me they don't understand a poem, I say, 'Fine, just listen to it. The exposure to it is part of its power. Don't vex yourself with an intellectual understanding of it.' We don't expect to understand graphic art that way."

I couldn't agree more. It gets so tiresome to hear people complain about poetry that employs any level of abstraction. When we look at an abstract painting and consider its colors, forms and patterns, we don't kvetch that it's "not saying anything." Yet all too often the readers of poetry lose interest if they don't immediately "get the story," or if it's not all lyrical meditation on trees and streams, or confessional hand-wringing over mothers and lovers.

As an aside, I've been a great admirer of Dana Goodyear's poetry and essays since we were both in Wayne Koestenbaum's poetry workshop at Yale around '95. That has remained one of the most influential classes of my life, both in the writing it inspired and the friendships it forged.

The article is not online, but here's a link to Dana's TNY blog and a post in which she finds traces of Snyder in Japan:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/danagoodyear/2008/10/snyder-in-japan.html

Here's a link to Snyder's new poem in The New Yorker, "Mu'Chi's Persimmons": http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2008/10/20/081020po_poem_snyder

And here's a link to Dana's first book, Honey and Junk:
http://www.amazon.com/Honey-Junk-Poem-Dana-Goodyear/dp/0393060063