Back on the Fire: Essays

This collection of essays by Gary Snyder, now in paperback, blazes with insight. In his most autobiographical writing to date, Snyder employs fire as a metaphor for the crucial moment when deeply held viewpoints yield to new experiences, and our spirits and minds broaden and mature. Snyder here writes and riffs on a wide range of topics, from our sense of place and a need to review forestry practices, to the writing life and Eastern thought. Surveying the current wisdom that fires are in some cases necessary for ecosystems of the wild, he contemplates the evolution of his view on the practice.

Contents; 1. Fires, Floods, and Following the Dao 3; 2. The Ark of the Sierra 9; 3. Migration/Immigration:Wandering South and North, Erasing Borders, Coming to Live on Turtle Island 17; 4. Ecology, Literature, and the New World Disorder:Gathered on Okinawa 21; 5. Thinking Toward the Thousand-Year Forest Plan 37; 6. The Mountain Spirit's True [No] Nature 43; 7. The Path to Matsuyama 51; 8. Writers and the War Against Nature 61; 9. Entering the Fiftieth Millennium 73; 10. Lifetimes with Fire 81; 1. With Wild Surmise 95; 2. Sustainability Means Winning Hearts and Minds 97.

3. "Can Poetry Change the World?" 994. Three Way Tavern 103; 5. The Will of Wild Wild Women 1; 6. Coyote Makes Things Hard 111; 7. Shell Game 117; 8. "The Way of Poisons" 121; 9. Regarding "Smokey the Bear Sutra" 123; 10. On the Problems Lurking in the Phrase"Before the Wilderness" 129; 11. Allen Ginsberg Crosses Over 133; 12. Highest and Driest 137; 13. Afterword to a New Edition of Riprap 141; 14. The Cottonwoods 145; 15. Harriet Callicotte.