Snyder, Gary

Snyder, Gary, 1930–, American poet, b. San Francisco. Associated with the beat generation of the 1950s, he lived in Japan from 1956 to 1968. His poetry, influenced by Zen Buddhism and Native American culture, celebrates the peace found in nature and decries its destruction; volumes include Myths and Texts (1960), Turtle Island (1974; Pulitzer Prize), Axe Handles (1983), No Nature: New and Selected Poems (1992), and Danger on Peaks (2004).

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Snyder, Gary (Sherman)

(born May 8, 1930, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.) U.S. poet. Snyder worked as a forest ranger, logger, and seaman and studied Zen Buddhism in Japan (1958–66). His poetry, early identified with the Beat movement, is rooted in ancient, natural, and mythic experience. It initially contained images drawn from his outdoor work in the Pacific Northwest and later reflected his interest in Eastern philosophies. His volumes include Turtle Island (1974, Pulitzer Prize), Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996, Bollingen Prize), and Danger on Peaks (2004). From the late 1960s he was an important spokesman for communal living and ecological activism.

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Snyder, Gary (Sherman) (1930–  ) poet, writer; born in San Francisco. He studied anthropology at Reed College (B.A. 1951), at Indiana University (1951–52), and at the University of California: Berkeley (1953–56), where he later taught (1964–65; 1986). He also studied Buddhism in Japan (1956; 1959–64; 1965–68), and was a seaman and a forester. Based in Nevada City, Calif., he is known for his association with the Beat poets and for his poetry on mystical and environmental themes, as in Turtle Island (1974).