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Language of Material:
English
Contributing Institution:
University of California, Davis Library, Dept. of Special Collections
Title: Gary Snyder Papers
Creator:
Snyder, Gary (1930-)
Identifier/Call Number: D-050
Physical Description:
275.2 linear feet
Date (inclusive): 1910-2018
Date (bulk): 1945-2009
Abstract: The Gary Snyder Papers document the personal and professional activities of Gary Snyder (1930- ), poet, essayist, translator,
Zen Buddhist, environmentalist, lecturer, and teacher. Snyder is considered one of the most significant environmental writers
of the twentieth century and a central figure in environmental activism. He wrote more than twenty books of poetry and prose
including his forty-year work
Mountains and Rivers Without End and
Turtle Island, for which he won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The collection spans the years 1910-2009 (1945-2002 bulk) and continues
to grow. Drafts as well as final versions of poems and prose pieces are found in the collection along with correspondence,
recordings of poetry readings and interviews, subject files, manuscripts and publications by other authors, serials, ephemera,
and memorabilia.
Collection is open for research with the exception of fourteen letters in Series 2, Box 214 which are restricted until September
8, 2038. Appropriate reading room rules and forms required for use.
The Library holds physical ownership of the Gary Snyder Papers. Copyright to the materials found in the Gary Snyder Papers
are protected by copyright law, chapter 17, of the U.S. Code. Users are responsible for satisfying any claimants of literary
property. Requests to publish or use materials requires the "Requests for Permission to Use Materials Owned by UC Davis Library,
Special Collections" and clearance by copyright holders.
[Identification of item], Gary Snyder Papers, D-050, Special Collections, UC Davis Library, University of California, Davis.
Special Collections began acquiring the collection from Gary Snyder in 1983. As of 2003, the collection consists of 270 linear
feet and it continues to grow.
In October 2002, the General Library, Department of Special Collections at the University of California, Davis was awarded
an $86,765 grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) administered
by the California State Librarian to develop a finding aid for the Gary Snyder Papers to be mounted on the Online Archive
of California (OAC). The project was also supported by in-kind funds from the General Library, University of California, Davis
to process the collection. Additionally, the grant provided for the cataloging of a select group of monographs and serials
in the Papers to make them accessible through the OCLC union catalog.
Daryl Morrison, Head of Special Collections, served as Project Manager. She administered the grant project, set work goals,
held weekly meetings to discuss technical issues, and provided reports. The Gary Snyder Grant Project Advisory Committee evaluated
progress on the grant project and provided technical advice. Sara Gunasekara and Melissa Tyler were the Project Archivists.
In 1995, Pamela Pogojeff and John Skarstad created a finding aid for material that had been acquired through the year 1983.
Skarstad also assisted the archivists by providing historical background information on the collection. Gunasekara and Tyler
arranged and described the material acquired since 1983 and reprocessed and integrated the earlier accession into a unified
collection of 270 linear feet of material. As they created the new finding aid, the archivists entered their data into the
locally developed Encoded Archival Description (EAD) Creation Application and XML templates. Jared Campbell, the project's
Finding Aid Encoder/Metadata Coordinator and technical advisor, prepared the final version of the EAD finding aid for mounting
on OAC. Programmer Jim Sylva provided additional technical support by designing XML templates and XSLT stylesheets. Special
Collections student assistants Jenny Hodge, Debbie Pan, and Renee Therriault performed data entry work.
John Sherlock, Rare Books Librarian and principal author of the grant proposal, selected and directed materials to Monographs
and Serials Cataloging. Original Cataloger, Elaine Franco, and Copy Cataloger Loretta Firestone provided cataloging from the
Monographs Department, headed by Karleen Darr. Pat French, Head of Serials, oversaw serials cataloging by Willy Maulit. Assistance
in translating Chinese and Japanese language materials was provided by East Asian Librarian Annie Lin, Japanese Language Specialist
Terri Matsumura, and Chinese Language Cataloger Carolyn Geng.
Poet, essayist, translator, Zen Buddhist, environmentalist, and teacher, Gary Snyder made an indelible mark on late-twentieth
century thought. He is considered one of the most significant environmental writers of the twentieth century and a central
figure
in environmental activism.
Snyder wrote more than twenty books of poetry and prose including:
Riprap (1959),
Myths & Texts (1960),
Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems (1965),
A Range of Poems (1966),
The Back Country (1967),
Earth House Hold: Technical Notes & Queries for Fellow Dharma Revolutionaries (1969),
Regarding Wave (1970),
Turtle Island (1974),
The Old Ways (1977),
The Real Work: Interviews & Talks, 1964-1979 (1980),
Axe Handles (1983),
Passage Through India (1983),
Left Out in the Rain: New Poems 1947-1985 (1986),
The Practice of the Wild (1990),
No Nature: New and Selected Poems (1992),
A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds, New and Selected Prose (1995),
Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996),
The Gary Snyder Reader (1999),
The High Sierra of California (2002), and
Look Out: A Selection of Writings (2002).
In addition to his books, Snyder contributed his works of poetry and prose to numerous journals and anthologies. He often
provided introductions and prefaces to scholarly translations, Buddhist studies, and poetry books. His writings have been
translated into a number of languages, and he has been the subject of several critical books and many interviews.
Gary Sherman Snyder was born to Harold and Lois Snyder on May 8, 1930 in San Francisco, California. The family soon moved
to the
Pacific Northwest, to start a small dairy farm north of Seattle, Washington. His sister, Anthea, was born in 1932. The family
moved
to Portland, Oregon, in 1942. Snyder climbed Mt. St. Helens in 1945; and a year later he joined the Portland Mazamas, a
mountaineering club. Throughout his life he has continued to climb mountains and take long wilderness hikes. During his high
school
years, he held a number of part-time jobs including working at a camp on Spirit Lake in Washington and as a copy boy for the
Portland
Oregonian.
In 1947, Snyder graduated from Lincoln High School and enrolled at Reed College. He published his first poems in the campus
literary magazine,
Janus. While at Reed, he met fellow poets Philip Whalen and Lew Welch who would become his lifelong friends. Snyder
graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Anthropology in 1951. His senior thesis was later published as
the
book,
He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village: The Dimensions of a Haida Myth (1979).
Snyder spent the summer of 1951 working as a timber scaler on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation on the east side of the
Oregon
Cascades. Following the summer job, he hitchhiked to Indiana University to begin graduate study in Anthropology. It was on
the trip
east to Indiana that Snyder had a revelation that constituted a real turning point in his life. In an interview with the
Commonwealth Club on May 15, 2002, Snyder described the incident, "In the middle of Nevada, on old Interstate 40, there was
a
period of about five hours where nobody would give me a ride. As I stood there in the middle of the sagebrush flats, I was
reading
through a chapter of Suzuki's
Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series, and I hit on some phrases that turned my mind totally around. I knew that I
wouldn't last at Indiana, and that I would soon be heading in the other direction back toward Asia, but I had to complete
my
short-term karma. So I did finish out that semester and then went back to the West Coast."
By spring 1952, Snyder was living with Philip Whalen in San Francisco and taking on odd jobs in order to support himself.
During
the early 1950's, Snyder returned several times to the forests and mountains of the Pacific Northwest for summer employment
including stints as a choker-setter for the Warm Springs Lumber Company and as a fire lookout. From 1953 to 1955, he lived
in a
tiny cottage near campus as he pursued graduate studies in the Department of East Asian Languages at the University of California,
Berkeley. It was while he was at Berkeley that Snyder met Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.
In October 1955, Snyder and Ginsberg hosted a poetry reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. Snyder, Ginsberg, Philip
Lamantia, Michael McClure, and Philip Whalen read, and Kenneth Rexroth acted as master of ceremonies. Snyder read his poem,
"A
Berry Feast." Jack Kerouac recalled this event in
The Dharma Bums (1958) and used Snyder as the basis for the book's fictional hero, Japhy Ryder, a Beat poet, Asian
scholar, and mountain climber. In the early months of 1956, Snyder moved into a cabin in Mill Valley and Kerouac later joined
him
there. Snyder named the place,
Marin-an -- Japanese for "Horse Grove Hermitage" for the adjacent meadow with its grazing mares.
In May 1956, Snyder left for Japan to study and work at a Buddhist temple, Shokoku-ji, in conjunction with the activities
of the
First Zen Institute of America's Kyoto facility. He took a job, in August 1957, as a wiper in the engine room of the
S.S. Sappa Creek and was at sea for eight months until the ship reached the United States in April 1958. He spent the
next nine months involved in the San Francisco Bay Area literary scene before returning, in early 1959, to Kyoto, where he
began
studying under Oda Sesso Roshi at the Daitoku-ji monastery. During this time, Snyder's first book
Riprap was published, printed in Kyoto by Cid Corman and distributed through City Lights Books.
Snyder married Joanne Kyger in Kyoto in February 1960. From late 1961 to early 1962, the pair spent six months travelling
in Sri
Lanka, India, and Nepal. They joined Allen Ginsberg in New Delhi and visited with the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala. Snyder returned
to
San Francisco in May 1964, and that fall he taught English classes at the University of California, Berkeley. Snyder and Kyger
divorced in 1965, and he returned to Japan in October of that year.
On August 6, 1967, Snyder married Masa Uehara. The ceremony took place on the rim of an active volcano on Suwa-no-se, a small
island north of Okinawa. Suwa-no-se was the site of the Banyan Ashram, founded by Nanao Sakaki, a poet, World War II veteran,
and
Japanese cultural radical. In 1967, Snyder briefly lived at the Banyan Ashram with the group of young people who gathered
around
Sakaki and called themselves
Buzoku or Tribe.
In April 1968, Snyder's first son, Kai, was born in Kyoto. The family left Japan in December 1968 to make their home in
California. A second son, Gen, was born in 1969. In 1970, Snyder took up residence with his wife and two young sons on San
Juan
Ridge, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, near Nevada City, California. With students and friends, Snyder built
his
home and named it
Kitkitdizze, a Native American (Wintun) word for a local plant with a unique and pungent aroma. Snyder and Uehara
divorced in 1989.
Snyder was a founding member of the "Ring of Bone" Zendo, a country-based Mahayana Buddhist sangha, which is located on his
property on San Juan Ridge. Meetings and sesshin were first held in Snyder's barn in the 1970's and later moved to the Zendo
after
it was constructed in 1982. The Zendo was named "Ring of Bone" after the poem by Lew Welch. Although the Zendo is an affiliate
of
the Diamond Sangha in Hawaii, it functions as a completely independent and self-governing church.
Using Kitkitdizze as his home base, Snyder toured extensively, giving readings and talks, doing what he termed, "hunting and
gathering." In addition to his numerous appearances in the United States and Canada, his lecture tours took him to Australia
in
1981, Sweden, Scotland, and England in 1982, Taiwan in 1990, Spain in 1992, Ireland in 1995, and Greece and the Czech Republic
in
1998, Korea and Japan in 2000, Japan and France in 2002, and Japan again in 2003.
Snyder married Carole Koda in April 1991 in a ceremony at Kitkitdizze. She is a writer and has two daughters, Mika and Robin.
Of
Japanese-American heritage, Koda grew up in the South Dos Palos area of the San Joaquin Valley of California on a large rice
farm
that had first been planted by her father's parents. Her father researched and founded the "Kokuho Rose" line of rice and
was a
pioneer in using airplanes to plant rice from the air.
Snyder became a faculty member in the Department of English at the University of California, Davis in 1986. He was instrumental
in founding the "Nature and Culture" program (1993), an undergraduate academic major for students of society and the environment.
He was also active in establishing "The Art of the Wild" (1992), an annual conference on wilderness and creative writing.
The
Academic Senate selected Snyder as the 2000 Faculty Research Lecturer, the University of California, Davis' highest faculty
peer
honor. He retired in 2002.
Recognition of Snyder's achievements includes the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his book
Turtle Island, his appointment to the California Arts Council (1975-1979), and his induction into both the American
Academy of Arts and Letters (1987) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993). After his long poem cycle and forty-year
work,
Mountains and Rivers Without End, was published, he was presented with the 1997 Bollingen Prize for Poetry. In
conferring the award, the judges observed, "Gary Snyder through a long and distinguished career, has been doing what he refers
to
in one poem as 'the real work.' 'The real work' refers to writing poetry, an unprecedented kind of poetry, in which the most
adventurous technique is put at the service of the great themes of nature and love. He has brought together the physical life
and
the inward life of the spirit to write poetry as solid and yet as constantly changing as the mountains and rivers of his American
-- and -- universal landscape." Snyder received the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Grant in 1998. Also in 1998, he was honored
with
the Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai (Society for the Propagation of Buddhism) award for his outstanding contributions in linking Zen thought
and respect for the natural world across a lifelong body of poetry and prose. In 2001, he was awarded the California State
Library
Gold Medal for Excellence in the Humanities and Science.
Snyder continues his writing career at Kitkitdizze.
A detailed chronology follows this biography.
Sources:
"A Brief Biography." University of California, Davis. Dept. of English website.
http://www.english.ucdavis.edu/faculty/snyder/a_brief_biography.htm
Accessed August 20, 2003.
Donahue, James J.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 275: Twentieth-Century American Nature Writers: Prose. A Bruccoli Clark
Layman Book. Edited by Roger Thompason, Virginia Military Institute, and J. Scott Bryson, Mount St. Mary's College. Gale Group,
2003. pp. 294-302.
"Gary Snyder: A Brief Biography." Stanford Humanities Center, "Mountains and Rivers" workshop website.
http://shc.stanford.edu/shc/1997-1998/97-98workshops/Gary.Snyder.html
Accessed Sept. 29, 2003.
"Gary Snyder & John Suiter,
In Conversation-May 15, 2002." Commonwealth Club website.
http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/02/02-05snyder-suiter-speech.html
Accessed August 27, 2003.
McLeod, Dan. "Gary Snyder."
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 16: The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America. Detroit: Gale Research
Co., 1983. p. 486-500.
Murphy, Patrick D.
A Place for Wayfaring: The Poetry and Prose of Gary Snyder. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2000.
Ring of Bone Zendo Newsletter. Oct. 15, 1986; March 10, 1987; March 7, 1988.
Snyder, Gary, Wendell Berry, and Carole Koda.
Three on Community. Boise, Idaho: Limberlost Press, 1996.
Suiter, John.
Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Jack Kerouac in the North Cascades. Washington, D.C.:
Counterpoint, 2002.
Yamazato, Katsunori. "Snyder, Sakaki, and the Tribe."
Gary Snyder: Dimensions of a Life. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1991.
| 1930 | Gary Snyder born (May 8) in San Francisco, California, first of two children born to Harold and Lois Wilkie Snyder. |
| 1932 | Snyder's family moves to country land near Lake City, Washington and starts a small dairy. |
| Sister, Anthea, born. | |
| 1942 | Family moves to Portland, Oregon. |
| 1943-1945 | Enters high school in Portland. |
| Works summers at camp on Spirit Lake, Washington. | |
| Summer of 1945 climbs Mt. St. Helens. | |
| 1946-1947 | Joins the Portland Mazamas, a mountaineering club. |
| Works summers for United Press and as a copy boy for the Portland Oregonian. | |
| Graduates from Lincoln High School. | |
| Climbs a number of Pacific Northwest snowpeaks. | |
| 1947 | Summer, backpacks in the southern Washington Cascades. |
| Climbs Mt. Rainier. | |
| Begins undergraduate study at Reed College, Portland, Oregon. | |
| 1948 | Summer, hitchhikes to New York City, gets seaman's papers and ships out in the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union. |
| Visits Colombia and Venezuela. | |
| 1949 | Summer, works on the trail crew for the U.S. Forest Service, Columbia National Forest (now the Gifford Pinchot National Forest). |
| 1950 | Publishes first poems in Reed College student publication Janus. |
| Marries Alison Gass. | |
| Summer, works for U.S. Park Service excavating the archaelogical site of old Fort Vancouver. | |
| 1951 | Spring, graduates from Reed College with BA in Anthropology and Literature, senior thesis, The Dimensions of a Haida Myth. |
| Summer, works as timber scaler on Warm Springs Indian Reservation, backpacks in the Olympic Mountains. | |
| Fall, begins graduate program in Anthropology at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, but stays only one semester. | |
| 1952 | Spring, returns to San Francisco, does odd jobs, lives with poet Philip Whalen. |
| Summer, works as lookout at Crater Mountain, Mt. Baker National Forest. | |
| Divorces Alison Gass. | |
| 1953 | Summer, works as a lookout in Mt. Baker National Forest on Sourdough Mountains, works on Myths & Texts. |
| Fall, meets Kenneth Rexroth. | |
| 1953-1955 | Graduate student, East Asian Languages Department, University of California, Berkeley. |
| 1954 | Summer and fall, works as choker-setter for Warm Springs Lumber Company, Oregon. |
| 1955 | Summer, works on trail crew, Yosemite National Park. |
| Long backpack trip in the Minarets and headwaters of the Kern. | |
| Fall, continues East Asian language study at U.C. Berkeley and translates Han-Shan. | |
| Meets Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in San Francisco. | |
| Poetry reading at Six Gallery in San Francisco. | |
| Lives with Jack Kerouac in cabin in Mill Valley. | |
| 1956 | May, by freighter to Kyoto, Japan, lives in Zen Temple Shokoku-ji. |
| Studies under Miura Isshu Roshi. | |
| Summer, with Japanese climber friends, backpacks and climbs in the Northern Japanese Alps. | |
| 1957 | August, boards S.S. Sappa Creek in Yokohama, works as wiper in engine room. |
| Visits Persian Gulf five times, Italy, Sicily, Turkey, Okinawa, Wake, Guam, Ceylon, Samoa, Hawaii. | |
| 1958 | April, disembarks in San Pedro, returns to San Francisco. |
| Shares Marin cabin with Lew Welch, spends nine months involved in the literary scene. | |
| 1959 | Returns to Kyoto, Japan and begins study under Oda Sesso Roshi at the Daitoku-ji monastery. |
| Riprap published, printed in Kyoto and sold through City Lights Books, San Francisco. | |
| 1960 | Myths & Texts published by Totem Press. |
| Marries Joanne Kyger in Kyoto. | |
| 1961-1962 | Kyger and Snyder go to India by boat, travel extensively in Sri Lanka, India, and Nepal. |
| Join Allen Ginsberg in New Delhi. | |
| Visit with the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala. | |
| 1963 | Allen Ginsberg visits Kyoto. |
| Snyder and Ginsberg first meet poet Nanao Sakaki. | |
| 1964 | May, Snyder returns to the West Coast. |
| Summer, long backpack trip in the Sierra in Bubbs Creek country. | |
| Fall, teaches English poetry workshops and classes at U.C. Berkeley. | |
| 1965 | Summer, participates in Berkeley Poetry Conference (Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, Jack Spicer, James Koller, Lew Welch, Allen Ginsberg, and others.) |
| Long trip with Ginsberg to British Columbia where the two climb Glacier Peak in the North Cascades. | |
| October, returns to Japan. | |
| Six Sections from Mountains and Rivers Without End published by Grey Fox Press. | |
| Kyger and Snyder divorce. | |
| 1966 | Meets Masa Uehara. |
| Visits U.S., participates in the "Gathering of the Tribes" in Golden Gate Park. | |
| A Range of Poems published in England. | |
| Oda Sesso Roshi dies. | |
| 1967 | March, returns to Japan. |
| Summer at Banyan Ashram on Suwa-no-se Island in the East China Sea. | |
| Marries Masa Uehara there. | |
| Winter, studies with Nakamura Sojun Roshi at Daitokuji. | |
| 1968 | Son, Kai, born in Kyoto. |
| Returns to U.S., receives Levinson Prize from Poetry (Chicago), and is awarded Guggenheim Fellowship. | |
| Publishes The Back Country. | |
| Father, Harold Snyder dies. | |
| 1969 | Son, Gen, is born. |
| Earth House Hold published. | |
| Summer, backpacks with Nanao Sakaki in high Sierra. | |
| Visits environmental activists around the U.S., distributes "Smokey the Bear Sutra" at Sierra Club Wilderness Conference, San Francisco. | |
| 1970 | Moves to San Juan Ridge, north of the South Yuba river, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. |
| Builds his house, "Kitkitdizze," with friends and students. | |
| Regarding Wave published. | |
| 1971 | Reads paper, "The Wilderness" at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Santa Barbara. |
| 1972 | June, attends United Nations Conference on the Environment, Stockholm, Sweden. |
| July, travels throughout Hokkaido, Japan researching wildlife, climbs in the Daisetsu Mountain Range. | |
| 1973 | The Fudo Trilogy published. |
| 1974 | Turtle Island published. |
| 1975 | Awarded Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Turtle Island. |
| First MLA panel on Snyder's poetry held in San Francisco. | |
| 1975-1979 | Appointed member of the Board of the California Arts Council. |
| 1976 | First critical book-length study of Snyder's work published: Bob Steuding, Gary Snyder. |
| 1977 | The Old Ways published. |
| 1979 | He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village: The Dimensions of a Haida Myth (based on Reed College thesis) published. |
| 1980 | The Real Work: Interviews & Talks 1964-1979 published. |
| 1981 | Summer, trip with family to Japan. |
| Fall, poetry readings in Australia with Nanao Sakaki. | |
| 1982 | Summer, "Ring of Bone" Zendo built. |
| Fall, readings in Sweden, Scotland, and England. | |
| 1983 | Axe Handles and Passage through India published. |
| Second critical study, Gary Snyder's vision by Charles Molesworth, appears. | |
| 1984 | Fall, travels in the Peoples' Republic of China as guest of the Writers' Union together with Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston, Allen Ginsberg, and others. |
| 1986 | Begins teaching at U.C. Davis. |
| Left Out in the Rain published. | |
| 1987 | Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. |
| Travels in the Brooks Range of Alaska. | |
| 1989 | Awarded the Fred S. Cody Memorial Award. |
| Masa Uehara and Snyder divorce. | |
| 1990 | Yuba Watershed Institute established. |
| Readings in Taiwan. | |
| Practice of the Wild published. | |
| 1991 | Marries Carole Koda. |
| Fall, Snyder, Koda and Sakaki travel in Japan. | |
| 1992 | Travels in Ladakh and readings in Spain. |
| No Nature published. | |
| 1993 | Elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. |
| 1994 | Travels in Botswana and Zimbabwe with Kai and Gen Snyder. |
| 1995 | A Place in Space published. |
| Readings in Ireland. | |
| Fall, trip to Nepal with Carole Koda and daughter, trek to Base Camp on Sagarmatha (Everest). | |
| 1996 | Travels to France for cave art study. |
| Mountains and Rivers Without End published. | |
| 1997 | Awarded the Bollingen Prize for poetry and the John Hay Award for Nature Writing. |
| 1998 | Travels to Japan for Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai (Society for the Propagation of Buddhism) award. |
| Readings in Greece and in the Czech Republic. | |
| Receives Lannan Award and a Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Grant to support literary and educational programs in the rural Sierra Nevada. | |
| 1999 | Gary Snyder Reader published. |
| 2000 | Named U.C. Davis Faculty Research Lecturer. |
| 2001 | Awarded the California State Library Gold Medal for Excellence in the Humanities and Social Sciences. |
| 2002 | Retires from U.C. Davis. |
| Look Out and The High Sierra of California published. |
The Gary Snyder Papers illustrate the personal and professional activities of Gary Snyder's life. The collection spans the
years 1910-2009, with the bulk of the material dating from 1945-2002. Drafts as well as final versions of poems and prose
pieces are found in the collection along with correspondence, recordings of poetry readings and interviews, subject files,
manuscripts and publications by other authors, serials, ephemera, and memorabilia.
The holdings of Snyder's works--poetry and prose drafts, research and lecture notes, translations, interviews, proofs, broadsides,
and books--and Snyder's correspondence are especially rich. Among his correspondents are: Donald Allen, Peter Berg, Cid Corman,
Peter Coyote, Robert Creeley, Bill Devall, Clayton Eshleman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Joanne Kyger,
James Laughlin, Michael McClure, Kenneth Rexroth, George Sessions, Anne Waldman, Alan Watts, Lew Welch, and Philip Whalen.
The Gary Snyder Papers are divided into eleven series: 1. Works by Gary Snyder, 2. Correspondence, 3. About Gary Snyder and
His Works, 4. Readings, Talks, and Workshops, 5. Files, 6. Others' Works, 7. Serials, 8. Audiovisual Materials, 9. Photographs,
10. Ephemera, and 11. Memorabilia.
MC007, Carpenter, Donald R. Correspondence. Donald R. Carpenter (1931-1995) was a close associate with Snyder in the post-Reed College days. This mini-collection contains
letters, including some poetry, from Snyder to Carpenter from 1964-1973. Also included are letters from Michael McClure, Philip
Whalen, and others.
D-121, Coyote, Peter. Papers. Peter Coyote, writer, director, and actor, was an early member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe (1965-1967), and a founding
member of the San Francisco Diggers (1967-1970). The Coyote Papers contain correspondence from Snyder as well as from friends,
actors, directors, and agents.
D-325, Kyoi/Kuksu. Archives.
Kyoi/Kuksu was a poetry magazine devoted to Northern California backcountry writers and artists. Snyder contributed poetry and prose
to five of the six published issues of the magazine. The collection, which ranges from 1972-1977, contains correspondence
and manuscript submissions from Snyder as well as many others. Also included are announcements, drawings, and production designs.
D485, McNeil, Katherine. Papers. McNeil compiled
Gary Snyder: a Bibliography (1983). This mini-collection contains correspondence with Snyder's publishers, collectors, and friends that McNeil assembeled
during the time she worked on the bibliography. In addition, there are 24 pieces of correspondence from Snyder answering various
questions and providing background material. Also included are five audiocassettes that contain a biographical/bibliographical
interview of Snyder.
D-124, Robertson, David. Papers. Robertson, professor at the University of California, Davis, since 1971, was a colleague of Snyder's in the English department.
Robertson's book,
Real Matter (1987) tells the stories of American authors (including Snyder) whose real life mountain adventures surface in their writings.
Robertson's papers contain items relating to
Real Matter, the U.C. Davis Nature and Culture program, and the Putah Creek Bioregion Project. Also included are his research materials
(including correspondence and audiocassettes of interviews) for an unpublished book on the San Juan Ridge.
D-221, Sanfield, Steve. Papers. Sanfield, a resident of the San Juan Ridge, is a storyteller and poet. His papers contain journals, manuscripts, publications,
audiocassettes, and ephemera relating to his life and career. Also included is correspondence from Snyder and many other individuals.
D-366, Uehara, Masa. Collection. This collection contains 113 letters from 1966-1981 written by Snyder to Masa Uehara, his former wife.
MC107, Whalen, Philip. Correspondence. Philip Whalen was a poet and close friend of Snyder's since their Reed College days. This mini-collection contains correspondence
with Snyder, Robert Creeley, Michael McClure and others from 1979-1987.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Poets, American -- 20th century
American poetry -- 20th century
Authors, American -- 20th century
American literature -- 20th century
Environmental literature.
Beat generation.
Buddhism -- United States.
Snyder, Gary (1930-) -- Archives
Allen, Donald, 1912-2004
Berg, Peter
Corman, Cid
Coyote, Peter
Creeley, Robert, 1926-
Devall, Bill,--1938-
Eshelman, Clayton.
Kerouac, Jack,--1922-1969.
Kyger, Joanne.
Laughlin, James,--1914-
McClure, Michael.
Rexroth, Kenneth,--1905-
Sessions, George,--1938-
Waldman, Anne,--1945
Watts, Alan,--1915-1973.
Welch, Lew.
Whalen, Philip