Book Review #2

For my second book review I decided to read:
Six Sections from Mountain and Rivers without End Plus one by Gary Snyder.

This book is very simply presented (and the library version is currently in pretty shabby condition): a solid blue paperback cover with the title and author written in plain font and nothing written on the back except for the price of $2.25 in the left bottom corner. Under the title and author on the front cover is a drawing that seems like it could be a scribble someone drew in a classroom. But this is what I liked about it. This cover is not ostentatious or pretentious, it doesn't beg for your attention. It feels as if the poems inside can hold their own, they don't need any aid from a flashy cover. It is only 44 pages, and as the title suggests, it contains seven poems all by Gary Snyder.

I enjoyed the poems themselves very much. They're written in a narrative style in both what seems to be his voice and the voice of others (in one poem a high school aged girl who is pregnant talking about a river). They are all written using different methods of writing, which keeps things interesting. The first poem reminds me of Jack Karouac's "Dharma Bums", as Snyder he talks about going hiking in the Sierras and the style is somewhat (obviously there are difference between poetry and prose. The second is the voice of the pregnant girl. The third describes experiences in different cities or towns along a highway on a trip taken by hitch hiking. The towns are listed along the right side of the page adjacent to their descriptions on the left. I thought this was especially cool, especially with the intent of the poem. The fourth may be my favorite, and is describing what someone is experiencing while under the influence of what ever it is that they were under the influence of.
Etc, etc, etc.
The last poem uses images (drawings), that look like native-american symbols to separate different sections of the poem. Different languages are used and it almost seems like a song or chant when they're used... like the drawing/symbols indicate a "sing-along" time as they sometimes do in books for religions practices or other situations I can't think of right now. It reminds me of books used in Jewish practices when there is both Hebrew and English translations of things and both are read (I'm not Jewish, so I don't really know that much about this).
Well, now that I've given you a silly summary of most of the poems in the book, I suggest you go read it for yourself. All of the poems really drew me in and kept me interested. I guess the cover was right, the poems could stand on their own. Good job, cover. Yeah.