Gary Snyder Archives - Improvised Life

Rocks are Useful and Sparkle with Poetry and Art

Knowing how a long lineage of artists and writers have used rocks and stones in their work expands my pleasure in those I collect for their beauty and endless uses…

Viewing the Day as a Blank Canvas

Every morning when we open our office for work, we take a minute to look at this image of artist Lucio Fontana. We love its enduring message.

Find Your Address As It Was Millions of Years Ago (+ Other Perspective Expanders)

Type in any modern address to see it on earth millions of years ago, for a powerful shift of view. Then read what poet Gary Snyder has to say…

Short, Powerful Instruction for an Alternative Possibility of Being

We read haiku often for the power they offer in just a few lines; they are HELPFUL, always offering a shift of our thinking and deepening of the moment. Jane Hirschfield illuminated why.

The Hidden Life of Trees

The New York Times recently reported the research of Peter Wohlleben, a German forest ranger, whose book The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate Discoveries From a Secret World, has become a best seller in Europe. In it, Wohlleben, who has spent his life studying trees, describes trees as social beings with…

Showing Up to Meet New Ideas

Every morning when we open up our office for work, we take a minute to look at this image taped on our wall, of artist Lucio Fontana approaching a blank canvas. We never tire of it. We think two things: That canvas is the day or a project or a new path, full of possibility AND… Look…

Thanksgiving Blessings, from Dylan to Neruda

At some point during the Thanksgiving meal (or any meal), taking a moment to acknowledge all we have with whoever we are with is a fine way to give thanks and climb right into the moment. Here are our favorite blessings — which all can be said/read aloud, as a grace or a toast — though…

Brilliance: Email Signature with a Poem Attached

Today I got an email from a Rachel Fleishman, a therapist I met recently. Attached to the usual email signature with her name and link to her website, was a short poem by Antonio Machado in tiny print. Ahhhh…such a swell idea: to send along some image-producing/light-bearing poetry, or a particularly great quote, that would surprise…

You Are Not Lost + Beat Wisdom + an un-Kerouac Road Map

This great sign reminded us of the Gary Snyder Poem, Off the Trail, which we think is an essential place to be at times. It is the opposite of the 45-page manual of driving instructions to follow the EXACT 17,527-mile road trip that Jack Kerouac documented in On the Road, his great, transformative, UNPLANNED odyssey

What Victor Hugo’s Manuscript Tells Us About Editing Work and Life

Victor Hugo’s handwritten manuscript of Les Misérables is full of crossed out passages, arrows and inserts of new text. It’s a fine symbol of the requirements for any inventive work.

gary snyder ‘don’t… be victimized by your lesser talents’

We were reading a packed-full-of-revelations1992 interview with poet Gary Snyder when we came across this amazing, of-the-cuff line. What a concept! The context is his answer to the question about whether he’d work as Secretary of the Interior or other political post if asked: I’ve never thought seriously about that question. Probably not, although I am foolish…