Minds Filled With Stones: “Riprap” by Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder was born on May 8th, 1930, and was apart of the beat generation. He is an American poet and an environmental activist that is associated with Zen Buddhism, and his poems are characterized by a deep respect for nature and environmental issues. Snyder uses image within his poems to open the readers imagination to the indeterminacies of the landscaping known as “riprap”.
“Riprap” by Gary Snyder was published by Origin Press in 1959 and expresses his experiences in Yosemite in 1955 when trail crew workers were laying“riprap”: a hand placed rock pavement covering an eroding trail. Snyder makes the connection with the rocks in riprap to the words that individuals use to communicate.
“Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time…” (Snyder 290)
Snyder uses visual imagery to have the reader place these rocks in front of them, and compares words to rocks. With the connection between these two ideas, Snyder is showing the reader that words can be controlled similar to how the rocks are carefully placed in the riprap. The individual has the choice of where to place words so that they leave a trail and a trace within the world.
He also includes other materials to show the connection with nature and how things like the cosmos are put into place, similar to a riprap.
“Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets…” (Snyder 291)
Snyder also includes small materials such as bark, leaves, and walls, and even includes much larger object such as planets. This could be seen as visualizing the impact of words: the bigger the impact the larger the object. Like the riprap that contains the carefully placed rocks, planets are also aligned so that they orbit perfectly around each other, showing how nature is intertwined.
“These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles —
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go…” (Snyder 291)
Visual imagery of the trail is used here to show the trails that are left by the horses with dragging saddles. Events which also leave a mark on the world. Snyder also incorporates the game of Go, in part because its objective is to declare territory, similar to how words can put their mark on the world.
One of the purposes of Snyder’s “Riprap” is to incorporate the environment using the visualization of objects such as rocks and relating them to poems, people, and planets. Snyder suggests that these things work in harmony and that like our interactions within the environment, our words can leave a remarkable impact on the world.
Snyder Gary. “Riprap.” The Portable Beat Reader, edited by Ann Charters, Penguin Books, 1992, pp. 290–291.
