After writing my master's thesis on deep ecology, I was fed up with all that 'eco-lala' for a while - no matter how interesting, I had had enough of all that capitalizing Nature and the true Self ans whatnot. I never had the chance to read Snyder, whose work was referenced often in the writings of Naess and Devall. Having sort of dismissed him as a oh-how-harmonious-nature-is kind of poet, I encountered him again now years later when I have picked up zen meditation again, and I realize that I have done him wrong. Snyder's poems speak to us in times of climate change, they have outlived the hippie epoch and hold up still, inspiring us to engage in the real work, with enough hands-on qualities to invite us to stay with the trouble. Good stuff.

To be honest, Gary Snyder often makes me want to punch a hippy. But his best poems are clear, strong descriptions of animals, a bird, a fox, a coyote, and landscapes, trees, water, clouds, sky.

Snyder, Gary. Turtle Island. New Directions, New York, 1974.