Axe Handles: Poems

by Gary Snyder

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Axe handles--For/from Lew--River in the valley--Among--On top--Berry territory--Bows to drouth--The Cool around the fire--Changing diapers-Beating the average--(etc.).

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Author Information

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150+ Works 6,205 Members
Gary Snyder was born in San Francisco, California on May 8, 1930. He received a B.A. in anthropology at Reed College in 1951. Between working as a logger, a trail-crew member, and a seaman on a Pacific tanker, he was associated with Beat poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso and studied in a Zen monastery in Japan. He wrote numerous books show more of poetry and prose including Danger on Peaks, Mountains and Rivers Without End, No Nature: New and Selected Poems, The Practice of the Wild, Regarding Wave, and Myths and Texts. He received an American Book Award for Axe Handles and the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Turtle Island. He has also received an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Bollingen Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize, the Levinson Prize from Poetry, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the Shelley Memorial Award. In 2012, he received the Wallace Stevens Award for lifetime achievement by the Academy of American Poets. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

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Common Knowledge

Original publication date
1983
Epigraph
How do you shape an axe handle?
Without an axe it can't be done.
How do you take a wife?
Without a go-between you can't get one.
Shape a handle, shape a handle,
the pattern is not far off.
And here's a girl ... (show all)I know,
The wine and food in rows.
--From Book of Songs (Shih Ching) (Mao no. 158): A folk song from the Pin area, 5th c. B.C.
Dedication
This book is for San Juan Ridge
First words
One afternoon the last week in April showing Kai how to throw a hatchet one-half turn and it sticks in a stump.
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I pledge allegience to the soil of Turtle Island, one ecosystem in diversity under the sun with joyful interpenetration for all.

Classifications

Genres
Poetry, Fiction and Literature
DDC/MDS
811.54Literature & rhetoricAmerican literature in EnglishAmerican poetry20th Century1945-1999
LCC
PS3569 .N88 .A97Language and LiteratureAmerican literatureAmerican literatureIndividual authors1961-
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Languages
English
Media
Paper
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3
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3