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The back country

Rare Books

The back country

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Description: This collection is made up of four sections: "Far West" -- poems of the Western mountain country where, as a young man. Gary Snyder worked as a logger and forest ranger; "Far East" -- poems written between 1956 and 1964 in Japan where he studied Zen at the monastery in Kyoto; "Kali" -- poems inspired by a visit to India and his reading of Indian religious texts, particularly those of Shivaism and Tibetan Buddhism; and "Back" -- poems done on his return to this country in 1964 which look again at our West with the eyes of India and Japan. The book concludes with a group of translations of the Japanese poet Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933), with whose work Snyder feels a close affinity. The title, The Back Country, has three major associations; wilderness. the "backward" countries, and the "back country" of the mind with its levels of being in the unconscious.
Type: Rare Books(Opens in new tab)
Publication date: 1971.
Call number: 660869

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Creator

Snyder, Gary (1930-)(Opens in new tab)

ISBN

0811201945

9780811201940

Provenance

Purchased from Kim Stanley Robinson, August 2025. From the Kim Stanley Robinson Library. With inscription to Kim Stanley Robinson from author, dated 16 XI 00 [November 16, 2000].

Dimensions

21 cm

Associated people

Snyder, Gary,

Robinson, Kim Stanley,

Associated organizations

New Directions Publishing,

Kim Stanley Robinson Library (Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens).

Find out more

View in the Library catalog(Opens in new tab)

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