SOURCE: "Chants and Chainsaws," in New York Times Book Review, December 27, 1992, p. 2.

In the following excerpt, Tillinghast praises No Nature for uniting a lifetime of Snyder's work.

Only in our age could a poem have been written that gives an account of life in California's Sierra Nevada from the perspective of 300 million years of natural and human history. And only Gary Snyder, with a command of geology, anthropology and evolutionary biology unmatched among contemporary poets, could have written that poem, "What Happened Here Before."

"First a sea: soft sands, muds, and marls," the poem begins, "loading, compressing, heating, crumpling." Then 220 million years along the evolutionary trail, "warm quiet centuries of rains." There is an understated majesty about the ease with which Mr. Snyder puts the present into perspective. He sketches the life of California Indians: And human people came with basket hats and nets winter-houses underground yew bows...