Riprap

An Introduction to Gary Snyder

On the Six Gallery Reading, 1955

Poets on the Peaks - Look at the photographs

Sourdough Mountain Trail at National Park Service website


Gary Snyder reading from Riprap at Berkeley



Gary Snyder: Cover image of Riprap, 1959

On "Milton by Firelight"

• A blog entry that explains the work of a single jack miner

• Snyder begins his poem by citing the first line of Satan's speech in Book IV [The Argument] of John Milton's epic "Paradise Lost": "Oh hell! what do mine eyes with grief behold?" I have reproduced the speech in its entirety below. Please follow this link to read more 

 "O Hell! what do mine eyes with grief behold?  
Into our room of bliss thus high advanced  
Creatures of other mould—Earth-born perhaps,             
Not Spirits, yet to Heavenly Spirits bright  
Little inferior—whom my thoughts pursue  
With wonder, and could love; so lively shines  
In them divine resemblance, and such grace  
The hand that formed them on their shape hath poured.             
Ah! gentle pair, ye little think how nigh  
Your change approaches, when all these delights  
Will vanish, and deliver ye to woe—  
More woe, the more your taste is now of joy:  
Happy, but for so happy ill secured             
Long to continue, and this high seat, your Heaven,  
Ill fenced for Heaven to keep out such a foe  
As now is entered; yet no purposed foe  
To you, whom I could pity thus forlorn,  
Though I unpitied. League with you I seek,             
And mutual amity, so strait, so close,  
That I with you must dwell, or you with me,  
Henceforth. My dwelling, haply, may not please,  
Like this fair Paradise, your sense; yet such  
Accept your Marker’s work; he gave it me,             
Which I as freely give. Hell shall unfold,  
To entertain you two, her widest gates,  
And send forth all her kings; there will be room,  
Not like these narrow limits, to receive  
Your numerous offspring; if no better place,             
Thank him who puts me, loath, to this revenge  
On you, who wrong me not, for him who wronged.  
And, should I at your harmless innocence  
Melt, as I do, yet public reason just—  
Honour and empire with revenge enlarged             
By conquering this new World—compels me now  
To do what else, though damned, I should abhor."