Gary Snyder | |
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![]() Snyder in 2007 | |
Born | San Francisco, California, U.S. | May 8, 1930
Occupation |
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Education | Reed College (BA) Indiana University, Bloomington |
Period | 1950–present |
Literary movement | San Francisco Renaissance, Beat Generation |
Notable works | Turtle Island, 1974; The Real Work, 1980; A Place in Space, 1995; Mountains and Rivers Without End, 1996 |
Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize for poetry, 1975; American Book Award, 1984; Bollingen Prize for Poetry, 1997; John Hay Award for Nature Writing, 1997; Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, 2008[1] |
Gary Snyder (born May 8, 1930) is an American poet, essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. His early poetry has been associated with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance and he has been described as the "poet laureate of Deep Ecology".[2] Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the American Book Award. His work, in his various roles, reflects an immersion in both Buddhist spirituality and nature. He has translated literature into English from ancient Chinese and modern Japanese. For many years, Snyder was an academic at the University of California, Davis, and for a time served as a member of the California Arts Council.
[George] Sessions' numerous references to Snyder have not passed unnoticed by other scholars. In his influential study The Idea of Wilderness (1991), Max Oelschlaeger titled the section on Snyder 'Poet Laureate of Deep Ecology.' What is even more striking is that in the footnote, Oelschlaeger confesses that 'Sessions in particular has influenced me to see and read Snyder as the poet laureate of deep ecology.'