Gary Snyder with Wang Ping: November 13, 2021

Gary Snyder, after reading from his Cold Mountain (Han Shan) Poems and his poem "Axe Handles," with Wang Ping reading her Chinese translations, talks about the genesis and nature of these works. Wang Ping writes: "In this video, Gary read some of his Hanshan poems, and I read the translation [to Chinese], then we went on to his legendary 'Axe Handles' poem, and the translation. We discussed how the poem was made, bringing many centuries of cultural entanglement, including Book of Songs from Confucius era, Ezra Pound and Arthur Waley's translations, Lu Ji's Wen Fu, and how it all came together at Kitkitdizze, Gary's homestead, at the foothills of the Sierras, where generations of beat poetry, environmental and deep ecology movements were birthed and flourished. This video was filmed by Steve Dickison, director of The Poetry Center, SFSU, which sponsored my poetry reading event at the Medicine for Nightmares bookstore on 11-11-21, which allowed me to make the trip to Kitkitdizze." Video courtesy of Wang Ping and Gary Snyder.