SOURCE: "Gary Synder and The Curve of Return," in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 62, No. 4, Autumn, 1986, pp. 681-94.

In the following excerpt, Schultz and Wyatt, summarize Snyder's early work and provide in-depth coverage of Axe Handles.

Published when he was 29, Snyder's first book [Axe Handles] empties the mind of the "damned memories" that clog it in an ascesis that marks the beginning of his quest. In Riprap (1959) he turns from America toward the East and begins the motion out and away that will preoccupy him for 15 years. Myths & Texts (1960) promotes Snyder's emerging vision of process in a dialectical structure which resolves that all form is a momentary stay, "stresses that come into being each instant." In a world where "It's all falling or burning" the experience of place is only a fiction, and there can be therefore nothing to return to. Mountains and Rivers Without End (1965-) will...