Gary Snyder’s Axe Handles and the Magic of Poetry and Translation

In this video, Gary read some of his Han Shan poems, and I read the translation, then we went on to his legendary Axe Handle poem, and the translation. We discussed how the poem was made, bringing many centuries of cultural entanglement, including Book of Songs from Confucius era, Ezra Pound and Arthur Waley's translation, Lu Ji's Wen Fu, and how it all came together at Kitkitdizze, Gary's homestead, at the foothills of the Sierras, where generations of beat poetry, environmental and deep ecology movements were birthed and flourished.
This video was filmed by Steve Dickison, director of Poetry Center, SFSU, which sponsored my poetry reading event at the Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore on 11-11-21, which allowed me to make the trip to Kitkitdizze.