Gary Snyder is one of the very few poets since 1900 to command both a large popular appeal and considerable respect from his peers. The reason for the former is his articulation of a possible religious faith at a time when cultural alienation was pushing many people to experiment with various non-Western metaphysical systems. The reason for the latter is evident if one compares Snyder with other poets responding to the same quest for alternate religious doctrines. On the one hand there are poets like Cid Corman and Philip Whalen who directly translate Zen materials and forms into English, and on the other there are those like Allen Ginsberg or Jerome Rothenberg who achieve the intense and dramatic religious emotion the former lack, but only at the cost of a considerable sacrifice of secular intelligence…. Snyder differs from Corman and Whalen by exercising care to adapt his Eastern meditative...