Axe Handles: Poems - Softcover

Snyder, Gary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1593760574 ISBN 13: 9781593760571

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2005

Synopsis

In Axe Handles Mr. Snyder reveals the roots of community in the family and explores the transmission of cultural values and knowledge.
"In making the handle of an axe by cutting wood with an axe the model is indeed near at hand." In exploring this axiom of Lu Ji’s, Gary Snyder continues:

I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft of culture,
How we go on.

This is a collection of discovery, of insight, and of vision. These poems see the roots of community in the family, and the roots of culture and government in the community.
Formally, the 71 poems in Axe Handles range from lyrics to riddles to narratives. The collection is divided into three parts, called "Loops," "Little Songs for Gaia," and "Nets," each containing poems of disciplined clarity. Gary Snyder knows well the great power of silence in a poem, silence that allows the mind space enough to discover the magic of song.

About this title

Review:

The title poem of this collection may be Snyder's strongest poem of the 1980s, and this is high praise. Incorporating Snyder's familiar and welcome themes of nature, family and eastern philosophy, it is a passage into a world of insights, small epiphanies, the rhythms of nature and culture, speech and sky, revealing themselves between these lines. Do yourself a favor and take a look at Axe Handles.

From the Back Cover:

Axe Handles is Gary Snyder's first collection of new poems since Turtle Island, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1974.

In Axe Handles Mr. Snyder reveals the roots of community in the family and explores the transmission of cultural values and knowledge. These are poems about language - language as the preeminent manifestation of culture.

About this edition

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1593760574
• ISBN 13: 9781593760571
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128