Closer to the Bone

Gary Snyder

Sometime in the late 1970’s, I sat on a blanket, sharing a picnic with my then-husband and listening to Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge on stage, at the grassy edge of the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. Warm, liquid sunshine poured over us and the music was wonderful. Just two people singing songs they had, for the most part, written themselves, in jeans and romantic, blousy shirts, accompanied by a guitar. I was impressed at how they handled the microphone, pulling their heads away when they took breaths, so as not to spoil the song.

Kristofferson’s writing had long been a favorite of mine. He gave himself in other ways too, as an actor, getting himself into trouble often enough, but never repudiating any of it. And his song-writing grew to include the masterful song “Closer to the Bone,” released in 2009, in which he finds himself still “open to the pleasure, equal to the pain.” Kristofferson died in 2024, but I found him to be a standard of artistic integrity by which I still judge those who stand on the world’s stage.

Thankfully, Gary Snyder is still with us at 94. In the early 1990’s, I took a daylong workshop with him in the University of California extension. Sitting at the base of a sparsely-populated lecture room, in a blue denim work shirt, and jeans, beginning to go grey, he resembled most political activists of the time. He lectured on ecology and literature, answering the usual stupid questions. I didn’t have any. I was simply there to absorb.

Snyder lived, as he still does, in the home he built, Kitkitdizze, in the foothills of the Sierras. He is a big subject. I think I have read most of his books and re-read especially often his poem sequence Mountains and Rivers Without End, published in 1996. And I have used his ideas, for instance this one, from Turtle Island [published 1974]: “The longing for growth is not wrong. The nub of the problem now is how to flip over, as in jujitsu, the magnificent growth-energy of modern civilization into a nonacquisitive search for deeper knowledge of self and nature … If people come to realize that there are many nonmaterial, nondestructive paths of growth - of the highest and most fascinating order - it would help dampen the common fear that a steady state economy would mean deadly stagnation.”

Snyder too is an example of the authenticity I found early on among those writing and publishing, and to whom I had some access as I grew. 

And here is one more: Jane Hirshfield, whom I first heard speak at a writer’s workshop in Port Townsend, Washington, in 1991. I remember sitting beside her in the crowded lunchroom. I am sure I told her how much I was enjoying her presentations, but again I had no real questions for her. Each of us finds our own way. Her lectures were collected in Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry [published 1997], which is also a favorite book.

Hirshfield is very protective of her privacy, but she is known to have spent several years at the San Francisco Zen Center. She has been especially interested in making sure poetry is grounded in science, which I appreciate. She has been generous in teaching, though not in colleges. In a discussion of Rilke and Basho in Nine Gates, she notes, “Each poet, in his own language, states that the basic matter of poetry comes not from the self, but from the world. From Things, which will speak to us on their own terms and with their own wisdom, but only when approached with our full and unselfish attention.”

It seems to me our attention must have diminished, given the great lengths artists now go to try to capture it. Spangles, flashing lights, noise and smoke on stage speak more to a degraded audience, it seems to me, than anything else. In the art world also, people go to bizarre lengths to get attention. Genre work, horror movies and true crime stories which end up as puzzles to solve, again speak to our inability to sit quietly with the wonder and awe to be found in our own lives, in human lives. 

Our cultural ills have been blamed recently on education, on the proliferation of screens in our lives, on the huge income inequality between the well-off elite and the poor, on our inability to see beyond each other’s differences, and on our lack of a common faith. They all contribute, but we must also take responsibility for our laziness, for our sophistry in critiquing the superficial, and waiting for art and the world to come to us.

In fact, the growth Snyder is talking about, the highest and most fascinating things we can engage in, would be to deepen our attention and elevate our tastes. Sink your teeth into a classic work of fiction you have been resisting. Listen to difficult music. Admit that the modern art you are looking at has nothing to say to you beyond the celebrity of the artist. Do your household tasks without having the television on or your phone playing in your ear. Authenticity requires that we listen to our deep selves, that we educate our taste to respond only to the best the world offers. We all have a long way to go.

But I do count myself lucky to have had so many models of integrity and authenticity in my growing cultural awareness. I can think of many more beyond these three, many long and useful careers contributing to our cultural wealth. We can feel it in our bones when we see it, or representations of it. A grounding in basic humanity. I celebrate the cultural wealth with which we are blessed.