Left Out in the Rain: New Poems, 1947-1985

Firmly rooted in the California tradition in American poetry, Snyder has a ponytail, spent time in a Japanese Zen monastery, knows Oriental and Amerindian poetry and philosophy and lives off the land in a 1960s manner. Although his Pulitzer-prize winner Turtle Island (1974) forms the bedrock of his reputation, Axe Handles, including many poems written earlier and published in 1983, is its equal. Now Snyder has assembled a volume consisting entirely of previously unpublished poems, and many of them are inferior to his best work. But while one can understand why Snyder held them back, one is glad to see them anyway: they serve as a retrospective, an autobiographical chronicle in verse of the poet's growth and development, and even the least appealing of them harbors some flash of brilliance, of quintessential Snyder. The special delight of this volume is the section of light verse permitted by the catch-all format. His satires, inventions and diversions are best brought in from the rain. (November)