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includes out of print WHITE CORN SISTER ... Read more

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The Life and Thoughts of a Zen Heroine
The book is really in two parts. Part I (which is the longer of the two) is a biography of Ruth Fuller Sasaki. The writing style, while not great provides a biography of a very interesting woman... roughly in the tradition of Alexandra David-Neel. Partly because I lived in Kyoto shortly after Ruth Fuller Sasaki died, I found this both informative and fascinating. Part II contains a few of her writings about Zen and about practical matters pertaining to living in Kyoto and studying Zen. These writings are small gems in terms of providing an explanation of Zen Buddhism and what Kyoto was like in the early 1960's.

A "must read" for Zen followers
Many years ago I had heard about an American woman who became the head abbot of a prominent Japanese temple but I couldn't remember her name or anything else about her.When I discovered this book, I decided I wanted to learn more.

Ruth Sasaki came from a wealthy family.Nothing in her early life suggested she would be anything more than a society matron who keeps a fine home, perhaps with a servant or two, produces a handful of children, before disappearing into local history.

Her interest in things Japanese sparked a deep, life-long desire to delve into Zen, translate key texts, restore a rundown temple at Daitoku-ji, and offer financial support to a group of followers to carry out these tasks.

If you're interested in Zen, or how it was made available to a wide audience in North America, this is a fine text to have in your collection.

As a blend of biography and religious literature, it can't be beat.
ZEN PIONEER: THE LIFE & WORKS OF RUTH FULLER SASAKI offers a survey of the life of a spirited Chicago turn of the century woman who might as easily have become a society matron, but chose the path of Buddhism at the time - a path most odd for a woman of her stature and upbringing. She was the only Westerner - and only woman - to be made a priest of the Daitoku-ji temple, and here provides three of her translations, an overview of her life, photos, a chronology and more. As a blend of biography and religious literature, it can't be beat.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch ... Read more

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The 'Sacred Paw' looks at the long and profound relationship between bears and humans. The bear is deeply embedded in the human psyche ... from teh fearsomely grizzly, to the paternal Smokey, to the beloved Teddy. Bear images are as widespread in our culture as were the myths and legends about bears that formed a crucial part of early societies.

A symbol of harmony in nature, the bear was regarded by our ancestors with a mixture of awe, fear, and veneration. In many ways, the bear is like man, combining strength with dexterity and possessing skill in using tools as hunting weapons. Bears are attentive parents (at least the female are), and their natural curiosity, playfulness, and intelligence have endowed them with an almost human personality.

In delightful detail and fascinating variety, 'The Sacred Paw' examines all these special qualities and more, illuminating the bear's immemorial place in our language, religion, and consciousness. ... Read more

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This important exploration of Chinese mythology focuses on the diverse and evocative associations between women and water in the literature of the T'ang dynasty as well as in the enormous classical canon it inherited. By extension, it peers from medieval China back into the mists of ancient days, when snake queens, river goddesses, and dragon ladies ruled over the vast seas, great river courses, and heavenly sources of water, deities who had to be placated by shaman intercessors chanting hymns lost even by the T'ang. As with his other notable works, Professor Schafer's meticulousresearches into the material culture of the past, coupled with a delightful writing style, allow us to better appreciate the literature of the T'ang by clarifying important contemporaneous symbols of fertility, mutability, and power, including the wondrous and ubiquitous dragon. ... Read more

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Majestic beauty in the waters
Schafer presents a world of wondrous beauty, where ancient goddesses live on in medieval literature. The stories and poems combine shamanism with eroticism, and devotion with adventure. The goddesses appear in the forces of nature, and seldom in world mythology do we see nature treated with such tender admiration. No wonder Gary Snyder wanted to write the foreword.

Over the centuries down to through the T'ang dynasty, Schafer shows the powers of Chinese nature goddesses in decline. From primordial deities wearing feathers or shells, they slowly fade into ghostly, silken-gowned courtisans. A poem attributed to the "Maiden in the Mist of the Hsiang" [River] reads:

That red tree -- the color of intoxication in autumn,
That blue stream -- a string strummed at night.
A delightful meeting that may not be repeated:
This wind and rain are blurring them, as will the years.

In this medieval literature, the beauties of nature evoke reverence and pleasure, as they still do. And the book focuses on only one class of Chinese goddesses, namely the sacred powers of waters, seas, rivers, and the mountain sources of cloud and rain. Besides these are other goddesses and divine women of Daoism, Buddhism, and popular religion, many of them revered by millions of people today.

Ian Myles Slater on: China's Divine Waters
This short book, "The Divine Woman," was originally published by the University of California Press in 1973. It is one of a series of studies of T'ang Dynasty China, following the vast "The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang Exotics" (1963) and the briefer"The Vermilion Bird: T'ang Images of the South" (1967). Unlike its two predecessors, which concentrated on Chinese contacts with the outside world ("Golden Peaches") and the lands to the south the T'ang Dynasty was attempting to incorporate into the Empire ("Vermilion Bird"), "The Divine Woman" deals mainly with literary developments of Chinese traditions already ancient to the T'ang. It is a book about some of the more obscure corners of Chinese culture, about poetry and short stories, and, incidentally, how foreign influences were assimilated and naturalized to fit Chinese conceptions of the world. The "Dragon Ladies and Rain Maidens" are the stars of a large cast of supernatural beings -- and some not-so-supernatural ones -- male as well as female.

Other works by Schafer concerning China during the T'ang dynasty are similarly specialized: "Pacing the Void: T'ang Approaches to the Stars," "Shore of Pearls: Hainan Island in Early Times,""Mirages on the Sea of Time: The Taoist Poetry of Ts'ao T'ang," and, on a major holy place, the very brief monograph "Mao Shan in T'ang Times" (Society for the Study of Chinese Religions, 1980, 1989). Schafer had a gift for evocative titles (one wonders what he wanted to call the "Mao Shan" study). [See below for possible new editions of these and other books by Schafer.]

Goddesses and other supernatural women, ghosts, and a variety of dragons and water-monsters share the pages with sacred mountains and rivers (Those familiar onlywith the standard, mostly benevolent, *lung*as "the Chinese dragon" may be in for a shock at the range of creatures Schafer catalogues.) A fair amount of linguistic and ethnographic information is provided, and there are plenty of notes to satisfy Schafer's fellow Sinologists. As often in Chinese studies, much of the secondary literature turns out to be in Japanese -- very, very appropriately, in this case, since it was T'ang China which provided the first great foreign model for Japan (which in turn preserved elements of Chinese culture that were nearly obliterated in China itself -- another story). Some of the themes treated here were fully naturalized in Japan, and now show up in manga and anime.

The North Point Press edition ten years later added a laudatory Foreword by Gary Snyder. Unfortunately, many readers will really need, instead, a brief introduction to the T'ang Dynasty, one of the great periods of Chinese history, roughly equivalent to the High Middle Ages in Europe (but a few centuries earlier in time). Fortunately, there are a number of political and cultural histories of China, and some excellent anthologies of Chinese literature (see below), even though most of those Schafer cites are now dated and often difficult to obtain.

A major theme of "The Divine Woman" is how the Confucian official ethos attempted, with considerable success, to historicize, trivialize, and sentimentalize the ancient goddesses of China, and how versions of them lived on in popular culture, surfacing in literature from time to time. Schafer translates and interprets a selection of poems and summarizes other literature. Despite Schafer's complaints of the tedium of poems loaded with stock images, his descriptions of the best of the poems and stories make one long for an anthology of his favorites. Fortunately, a good selection of this material now can be found, along with much else, in Stephen Owen's huge "An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911" (1996).

Although fuller details on the T'ang would have been nice in this context, I have also been impressed by Jacques Gernet's comprehensive "A History of Chinese Civilization" (1972; translated 1982, second edition 1996), with a helpful English-language bibliography, very much including Schafer; another very large book to serve as a companion to the richly packed, but surprisingly brief, "The Divine Woman." Schafer's own "History of China" is available in digital format (missing half a dozen maps), and sometimes used -- but besides being out of date, is no more than a brief introduction to the major political events and social trends.

Note, May 2005: There is now underway a project of reissuing in paperback Schafer's out-of-print works (essentially everything except "The Golden Peaches of Samarkand') by the Antique Collectors' Club and Floating World Editions, beginning with "Pacing the Void" and "Tu Wan's Stone Catalogue of Cloudy Forest: A Commentary and Synopsis" on March 30. The former was originally scheduled for release about a year ago, by Weatherhill Inc. according to theoriginal listing, but is now actually in my hand. See the Amazon pages for these two works for other details. No date has been announced for their edition of "The Divine Woman." (Meanwhile, some of the asking prices for used copies have become more reasonable.)

(Reposted from my "anonymous" review of September 8, 2003) ... Read more

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Chapters: Ken Kesey, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Richard Brautigan, Paul Bowles, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert Creeley, Neal Cassady, Kenneth Rexroth, Amiri Baraka, Gregory Corso, Denise Levertov, Frank O'hara, Ed Dorn, Robert Duncan, Anne Waldman, Michael Mcclure, Carolyn Cassady, Michael John Fles, Tuli Kupferberg, Kenneth Koch, Herbert Huncke, Charles Olson, Dick Mcbride, William S. Burroughs, Jr., Jack Spicer, Bob Kaufman, Daniel Terdiman, Lew Welch, Ed Sanders, Kirby Doyle, Diane Di Prima, John Wieners, Eric "Big Daddy" Nord, Joyce Johnson, Philip Whalen, Jeff Nuttall, Joanne Kyger, Sinclair Beiles, Jack Micheline, John Clellon Holmes, Elise Cowen, Neeli Cherkovski, Jane Bowles, Carl Solomon, Peter Orlovsky, Václav Hrabě, Ted Joans, Harriet Sohmers Zwerling, Janine Pommy Vega, Slim Brundage, Joffre Stewart, Walt Curtis, Puffer Volpe. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 359. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: William Seward Burroughs II (February 5, 1914) August 2, 1997; pronounced , also known by his pen name William Lee) was an American novelist, poet, essayist, painter and spoken word performer. Burroughs was a major figure of the Beat Generation and a postmodernist author who affected popular culture as well as literature. He is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the twentieth century." Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays. Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. Burroughs also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, and made many appearances in films. Burroughs was born to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri, where he began wri...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=33594 ... Read more

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This book is about bears. Over 150 poets, such as HaydenCarruth, Billy Collins, Mary Crow, Ruth Daigon, Jim Harrison, GeorgeKeithley, Galway Kinnell, Maxine Kumin, Ursula LeGuin, Judith Minty,N. Scott Momaday, Mary Oliver, Adrienne Rich, Kay Ryan, Gary Snyder,Susan Terris and others, write about bears as they exist in the wildand in our minds. Bears occupy a "most favored animal" status in thespiritual lives of many people and cultures, from the deep past to thepresent day.Their myths are rich and varied.The poems are dividedinto seven categories:nature, dreams, myths, persona, misc.,encountered, endangered.The book is full of illustrations.8 1/2 x10, perfect bound, full color cover. $1 from the sale of each bookwill be donated to groups striving to preserve bears and theirhabitats. ... Read more

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Folklore. Mythology. With an introduction by Gary Snyderand a foreward by the editor. John Smelcer, himself of Ahtna descent,here collects 26 tales from his tribe, also known as the Copper RiverIndians of Alaska. Raven, Loon, Mouse, Owl, Porcupine, Spider Woman,Rabbit, Fox, Wolf and others, these stories can serve "as anintroduction (and a prelude) to the rich oral traditions of the AhtnaAthabaskans of Alaska's Copper River." (--James Kari) Dale Seedscomments that "with its maps, photographs, and biographies (ofstorytellers), it offers a unique insight into the oral narrativethrough both a sense of place and personalities. It is an importantvoice..." ... Read more

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Where and what is the place of the wild? Is the goal of preserving biodiversity across the landscape of North America compatible with contemporary Western culture.

Place of the Wild brings together original essays from an exceptional array of contemporary writers and activists to present in a single volume the most current thinking on the relationship between humans and wilderness. A common thread running through the volume is the conviction that everyone concerned with the natural world - academics and activists, philosophers and poets - must join forces to re-establish cultural narratives and shared visions that sustain life on this planet.

The contributors apply the insights of conservation biology to the importance of wilderness in the 21st century, raising questions and stimulating thought. The volume begins with a series of personal narratives that present portraits of wildlands and humans. Following those narratives are more-analytical discourses that examine conceptions and perceptions of the wild, and of the place of humanity in it. The concluding section features clear and resonant activist voices that consider the importance of wildlands, and what can be done to reconcile the needs of wilderness with the needs of human culture. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by Thomson Gale on May 1, 2006. The length of the article is 439 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Gary Snyder. Danger on Peaks.(Book review)
Author: Fred Dings
Publication: World Literature Today (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 80Issue: 3Page: 76(1)

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

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Chapters: Ken Kesey, Greenwich Village, William Carlos Williams, Brion Gysin, Hotel Chelsea, Gary Snyder, North Beach, San Francisco, Pull My Daisy, Howl, Tangier, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert Creeley, on the Road, Neal Cassady, Kenneth Rexroth, Amiri Baraka, Gregory Corso, Naked Lunch, Denise Levertov, City Lights Bookstore, Ed Dorn, Robert Duncan, Joan Vollmer, John Gilmore, Anne Waldman, Howl and Other Poems, Michael Mcclure, Tuli Kupferberg, Kenneth Koch, Justin W. Brierly, Gia-Fu Feng, Shakespeare and Company, Charles Olson, Dick Mcbride, Junkie, Jack Spicer, Harold Norse, Victor Wong, Bob Kaufman, Judy Henske, John Brandi, a Supermarket in California, Move Under Ground, the Dharma Bums, Lew Welch, Ed Sanders, Kirby Doyle, Beat Hotel, Doctor Sax, Six Gallery Reading, Dreamachine, Diane Di Prima, Desolation Angels, John Wieners, and the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, Eric "Big Daddy" Nord, Joyce Johnson, Philip Whalen, David Meltzer, Cedar Tavern, Wichita Vortex Sutra, Jeff Nuttall, Joanne Kyger, Philip Lamantia, Sinclair Beiles, Enrico Banducci, George Whitman, Jack Micheline, James Grauerholz, John Clellon Holmes, Lunch Poems, Elise Cowen, Starting From San Francisco, Heart Beat, Peter Orlovsky, Auke Hulst, Václav Hrabě, Maggie Cassidy, Ted Joans, Visions of Gerard, Harriet Sohmers Zwerling, Janine Pommy Vega, 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft, International Poetry Incarnation, Old Angel Midnight, Better Books, America, Deliberate Prose, Off the Road, Door Wide Open, How to Speak Hip, Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg, Slim Brundage, Hettie Jones, New York Poets Theatre, Walt Curtis, Planet News, the Flower Thief, Mind Breaths, Tangerinn, Minor Characters, Villa Muniria, White Shroud Poems. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 540. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The Beat Generati...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=157208 ... Read more