Gary Snyder: Pulitzer Prize winning Beat poet

• December at Yase
• You said, that October,
• In the tall dry grass by the orchard
• When you chose to be free,
• “Again someday, maybe ten years.”

• After college I saw you
• One time. You were strange,
• And I was obsessed with a plan.

• Now ten years and more have
• Gone by: I’ve always known
• where you were—
• I might have gone to you
• Hoping to win your love back.
• You still are single.

• I didn’t.
• I thought I must make it alone. I
• Have done that.

• Only in dream, like this dawn,
• Does the grave, awed intensity
• Of our young love
• Return to my mind, to my flesh.

• We had what the others
• All crave and seek for;
• We left it behind at nineteen.

• I feel ancient, as though I had 
• Lived many lives.

• And may never now know
• If I am a fool
• Or have done what my
• karma demands.

• How Poetry Comes to Me
• It comes blundering over the 
• Boulders at night, it stays
• Frightened outside the
• Range of my campfire
• I go to meet it at the
• Edge of the light 

Gary Snyder (b. 1930) is an American poet, often connected to the Beat Generation of poets and the San Francisco poetry scene, although his poetry transcends any single poetic movement, with native folkways and ecology as primary themes in his work. A native of San Francisco, Snyder won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1975.

His style is marked by the use of simple diction and common speech-patterns as the basis for his poetic lines. He is also well known for his translations of ancient Chinese texts and contemporary Japanese poetry.