Axe Handles (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Gary Snyder
- First Published: 1983
- Type of Work: Narrative lyric
- Genres: Free verse
The Poem
Gary Snyder’s “Axe Handles,” a thirty-six-line poem, tells a small domestic story that widens into a meditation on parenting, the transmission of cultural heritage, and the relevance of ancient wisdom to ordinary, everyday life. The poet (who speaks the poem), tells about teaching his son Kai, on an April afternoon, how to throw a hatchet so deftly that it will lodge into a stump. Kai remembers having seen a hatchet-head stored in “the shop” and goes to get it. He “wants it for his own.”
The father uses the hatchet they had been throwing to shape...
[The entire page is 1617 words long]
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