[Hannah] Arendt's main point [in The Human Condition, her critical reassessment of the main tradition of European political philosophy,] is that the modern world is most hampered by its elevation of action over contemplation, with the concomitant devaluation of thought itself within the realm of action. To restore to political vision the awareness of the value and necessity of thought, not only as a form of activity but also as its most fully human form: this is Arendt's central project, and it is close to [Gary Snyder's] as well. From the objectivist poetics of Riprap and Myths & Texts, on to the personal doubt of The Back Country, and then through to the new senses of community and selfhood in Earth House Hold and Turtle Island, the curve of Snyder's career has been from the factlike density of perceptual intensity to the harmonious patternmaking of the immanently mythic imagination...