The Back Country
by Gary Snyder
Published by New Directions, New York, 1968. Trade paperback. Very good paperback in original wrappers. Author's signature on title page. Tight binding, solid spine, light shelf wear to extremities, previous owner’s signature to half-title and blindstamp to title page. clean unmarked text. 8vo, poetry collection, 128 pages. Copy of poet, translator and publisher Max Albrecht Wicker, with his blindstamp to title page.
At the time it was published, in 1968, there was simply no poetry like this in America, and Snyder deservedly became one of the nation's most celebrated poets. This collection emerged from a decade of profound cultural transformation, when the Beat generation's wandering spirit collided with Eastern mysticism and environmental consciousness. The book divides into 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. Snyder's precise, spare language echoes both ancient Buddhist texts and the rhythms of American wilderness, creating what Kirkus Reviews called "a reaffirmation of a back country of the spirit". This signed copy represents not just a landmark in American poetry, but a document of 1960s counterculture at its most articulate—where ecological awareness, spiritual seeking, and poetic innovation converged in the hands of a master craftsman who helped define an entire generation's relationship with nature and consciousness.
Loc: E9
The Back Country
by Gary Snyder
Published by New Directions, New York, 1968. Trade paperback. Very good paperback in original wrappers. Author's signature on title page. Tight binding, solid spine, light shelf wear to extremities, previous owner’s signature to half-title and blindstamp to title page. clean unmarked text. 8vo, poetry collection, 128 pages. Copy of poet, translator and publisher Max Albrecht Wicker, with his blindstamp to title page.
At the time it was published, in 1968, there was simply no poetry like this in America, and Snyder deservedly became one of the nation's most celebrated poets. This collection emerged from a decade of profound cultural transformation, when the Beat generation's wandering spirit collided with Eastern mysticism and environmental consciousness. The book divides into 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. Snyder's precise, spare language echoes both ancient Buddhist texts and the rhythms of American wilderness, creating what Kirkus Reviews called "a reaffirmation of a back country of the spirit". This signed copy represents not just a landmark in American poetry, but a document of 1960s counterculture at its most articulate—where ecological awareness, spiritual seeking, and poetic innovation converged in the hands of a master craftsman who helped define an entire generation's relationship with nature and consciousness.
Loc: E9
