The final reading of the Folger Shakespeare Library‘s 2011-2012 poetry series was Gary Snyder, the great, west coast poet of deep ecology. It took place last night.

He was an engaging reader and speaker when by himself on stage. Not powerfully so, but still significantly so. He has obviously led an interesting life (studying Zen Buddhism in Japan, serving on tramp steamers, reaching the summit of Mount Saint Helen the day that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and his relationship with various poets of the San Francisco Renaissance and the Beat writers).

In the past, I have described him as a Beat, though he was never part of the original group in New York, but only met them when they came out to San Francisco. Now, I would be more likely to relate his poetry with the man who introduced him to the Beats, Kenneth Rexroth, than with the Beats themselves. Like Rexroth, his poetry is more influenced by the restrained aspects of spiritualism, rather than the ecstatic ones.

As befits a poet associated with the deep ecology movement, his writing is very much grounded in the physical and the concrete. The realities of the natural world and the realities of living in the world.

One thing he said struck me. While living in Japan and studying meditation and Buddhism, he often used to visit an English language bookstore and buy books on ecology to read. Then, he pointed out, ecology was about the relationship of things to the natural world – which mainly meant how things ate each other. Only later, did it acquire the quasi-political/spiritual/activist meanings now associated with it. When one speaks of ecology now, one is generally making a statement about politics and society. Then, it was simply a branch of science.

During the Q&A, Snyder was very short with a young man who stood up and asked him to speak about Jack Kerouac’s novel, The Dharma Bums. The main character is generally considered to be based on Snyder and some of the events in the book based on some trips taken together by Snyder and Kerouac.

Snyder dismissed the whole line of thought, basically saying that Kerouac wrote fiction and Dharma Bums is novel. Not even one of Kerouac’s best novels (and Snyder’s tone implied he thought it not a very good novel). Then he said that someone always asks him about this and he’s tired of answering so that’s all he’s going to say. And that was how the Q&A ended.

The novel was clearly a touchstone for the young man – a way to keep a connection to the wilderness and the west coast while living her in DC – and I felt bad for him and for what was almost a public shaming by Snyder.

And let me say that I’m just glad that young men still read Kerouac. Whatever I may think of him as a writer, I think it will be sad day when young people stop indulging in old rebellions and stop reading Salinger, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and others when they are in their teens and twenties.

Whoever that young man was, kudos to him for finding meaning and solace in the turning to books.