Earth House Hold: Technical Notes and Queries to Fellow Dharma Revolutionaries

Gary Snyder

New Directions Publishing, 1969 - Poetry - 143 pages

"As a poet," Snyder tells us, "I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the late Paleolithic; the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying intuition and rebirth; the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe." He develops, as replacement for shattered social structures. a concept of tribal tradition which could lead to "growth and enlightenment in self-disciplined freedom. Whatever it is or ever was in any other culture can be reconstructed from the unconscious through meditation...the coming revolution will close the circle and link us in many ways with the most creative aspects of our archaic past."

What people are saying

Review: Earth House Hold

User Review  - Anthony Jacobson - Goodreads

'Earth House Hold' is a collection of poems, essays and journals by Gary Snyder. Beneath its prototypical eco-hippie exterior are romantic notions on existence and spirituality that I found very ...

Review: Earth House Hold

User Review  - Nancy - Goodreads

Incredible.

Contents

• Lookouts Journal: 1
• Review: 25
• Japan First Time Around: 31
• Spring Sesshin at Shokokuji: 44
• Tanker Notes: 54
• Record of the Life of the Chan Master Pochang: 69
• A Journey to Rishikesh and Hardwar: 83
• Buddhism and the Coming Revolution: 90
• Glacier Peak Wilderness Area: 94
• Passage to More Than India: 103
• Why Tribe: 113
• Poetry and the Primitive: 117
• Dharma Queries: 131
• SuwanoSe Island and the Banyan Ashram: 135

Popular passages

Page 150 - I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the Neolithic: the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe.‎

About the author

Gary Snyder was born in San Francisco and received a B.A. in anthropology at Reed College. He attended Indiana University and pursued the study of oriental languages at the University of California at Berkeley. When he was 18, he shipped out of New York as a sailor. He later worked as a logger and forest lookout in Oregon, Washington, and California. Before moving to Japan to study in a Zen monastery under a Bollingen Foundation grant, Snyder worked on an American tanker in the Persian Gulf and South Pacific Islands, then spent four months in India (1961--62). Snyder is one of the most famous Beat poets, along with Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. He is the most controlled and concise of that school; yet his adventurous life has given his verse a unique range of subject and feeling. Close to nature since childhood, he also is the most widely known poet of the ecology movement. Often his poems have a Zen-like stillness and sharpness of perception, which serves to define the connective web between humanity and the natural universe. Snyder is deeply interested in the American Indian and the idea of the tribe as an alternative to modern culture, or at least an example for modern culture. Besides receiving the first Zen Institute of America Award in 1956, Snyder was the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Sciences poetry prize in 1966. His essays, Earth House Hold (1969), composed of journal notes and diary excerpts, have become a classsic in the underground ecology movement.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Earth House Hold: Technical Notes and Queries to Fellow Dharma Revolutionaries; A New Directions book, NDP 267; Volume 267 of New Directions paperbook. 267
• Author: Gary Snyder
• Edition: 2, illustrated
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing, 1969
• ISBN: 0811201953, 9780811201957
• Length: 143 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Literary Criticism / American / General; Poetry / American / General