Begun in Berkeley on April 8, 1956, Gary Snyder’s Mountains and Rivers without End is an epic of geology, prehistory, and mythology. The poems travel beyond Western traditions to encompass Asian art and drama, Native American performance and storytelling, and Snyder’s own practice of Zen Buddhism.

—the wideness, the
foolish loving spaces
full of heart.

Walking on walking,
      under foot     earth turns
   Streams and mountains never stay the same.

First published in 1996—Gary worked on this for forty years—this landmark work  celebrates the disparate elements of the earth—sky, rock, water—while exploring the human connection to nature with a subtle wisdom that bears repeated, often revelatory, readings.

Out there somewhere
a shrine for the old ones,
the dust of the old bones,
         old songs and tales.

What we ate—who ate what—
          how we all prevailed.

 Essentially, this is a unique book-length poem about land and its processes, a book about wisdom, compassion, and myth, and a narrative work that is not quite like anything else. It’s one of the great American epics, like the foundational text of American literature, Leaves of Grass.

For this audio edition, the poet was recorded in his home in the Sierra foothills. This nearly complete reading, more than three hours in length, follows the audio edition of Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems. Deeply indebted to oral literatures, Snyder’s reading informs the text and adds a unique personal dimension to the work.

Among Gary Snyder’s other books: The Practice of the Wild and Back on the Fire.