Axe Handles: Poems

by Gary Snyder

Overview

In Axe Handles Mr. Snyder reveals the roots of community in the family and explores the transmission of cultural values and knowledge.
"In making the handle of an axe by cutting wood with an axe the model is indeed near at hand." In exploring this axiom of Lu Ji’s, Gary Snyder continues:

I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft of culture,
How we go on.

This is a collection of discovery, of insight, and of vision. These poems see the roots of community in the family, and the roots of culture and government in the community.
Formally, the 71 poems in Axe Handles range from lyrics to riddles to narratives. The collection is divided into three parts, called "Loops," "Little Songs for Gaia," and "Nets," each containing poems of disciplined clarity. Gary Snyder knows well the great power of silence in a poem, silence that allows the mind space enough to discover the magic of song.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781593760571
Publisher:	Counterpoint Press
Publication date:	01/28/2005
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	114
Product dimensions:	5.52(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.37(d)

About the Author

Steve Hogan is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Interview, Small Press, and elsewhere. Lee Hudson, a writer and researcher, was the founder and first director of the New York City Mayor's Office for the Lesbian and Gay Community. Both live in New York.

Editorial Reviews

Axe Handles presents poems that reflect a fine balance between physical reality and inner insight. Snyder emphasizes natural cycles, sees the oneness of things rather than their separateness, observes directly without pretense or arrogance ... His sense of the history of land and cultures and his ability to write as both the Worker and the Thinker create a fertile whole.

Los Angeles Times Book Review