Poeta Doctus

In a book of interviews and correspondence between Julia Martin and Gary Snyder, I read the following in a letter from Snyder dated 28 August 1987 (!):

…the wealth in America is at the top, and there are vast numbers of very poor people, not all of them black or brown by any means. The US is not economically top country, some of those northern European places like Sweden and West Germany are higher. Even Japan, these days. Homeless visible in the streets of every city & some of the larger towns; real rural poverty, numbers of school dropouts that are never pursued, if kids quit schools these days the schools forget them—lousy schools in any case. Most of the US has a kind of hard-bitten disorderly anti-intellectual anti-establishment funk. (136)

Here’s hoping this thirty years of plus ça change is only an eclipse in historical time of more humane, progressive tendencies.

I’ve long said, Gary Snyder is one of the sanest sentient beings on the planet. To read more, you can order the book from the publisher by clicking on the cover…