Mountains and Rivers Without End (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Gary Snyder
- First Published: 1996
- Type of Work: Poetry
- Genres: Poetry
- Subjects: Voyages, Philosophy or philosophers, Mythology or myths, Nature, Poetry or poets, Asia or Asians, Environment or environmental health, Buddhism
Ezra Pound’s complaint in Canto CXVI of his epic poetic sequence that “I cannot make it cohere” exemplifies the task of those modernist (or postmodernist) artists who intend to grasp the strands of the historical processes of their time and interweave them within an extended poetic vision. The contemporary reluctance to even acknowledge the possibility of a heroic conception of existence removes the possibility of an Odysseus, a Roland, or a Beowulf whose actions epitomize the values and virtues of an age or cultural community, leaving the poet in search of some other organizing...
[The entire page is 2526 words long]
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