SOURCE: "Buddhism and Energy in the Recent Poetry of Gary Snyder," in Mosaic: A Journal for the Comparative Study of Literature and Ideas, Vol. XI, No. 1, fall, 1977, pp. 117-25.

In the following essay, Almon investigates the Buddhist metaphysics that inform the poetry of Gary Snyder.

For all its attention to the physical world, the poetry of Gary Snyder has always had a metaphysical dimension. He once called poetry "a riprap (cobbled trail) over the slick rock of metaphysics," but metaphysics can also provide a trail over the slick rock of the poetry, providing a path where we might see only a difficult physical terrain. I will put aside the important matter of the influence of American Indian spirituality on Snyder's work and investigate the Buddhist context. Snyder's interest in Zen Buddhism is well-known: he is the poet who spent years in Japan studying it. While much of the...