CSoriano: On Gary Snyder

One thought I have on Gary Snyder is that he is not as well-acclaimed as he should be. The sole idea that there is a whole high school class that is focused on a poet that I have never even heard of leads me to questioning why Snyder is so underrated, yet so essential to the history of poetry. Snyder's background as a Buddhist-monk-in-training could possibly be an explanation as to why he has been so humble and modest about his poetry. Beat poetry was a popular aspect of the 1950s, and Snyder disregards himself as a beat poet, when he really was a part of the movement, which shows how he could have been so underrated due to his modesty.
Another thought I have on Gary Snyder is that he is an interesting and extraordinary man, who has lived through a lot, and is surprisingly still alive at eighty years old. He is an intellectual with the hundreds of poems and stories that he has composed over time. Snyder is a courageous handyman as a lumberjack when he was twenty years old. He is also a fearless explorer, hiking mountains since he was fifteen and still climbing at the age of eighty. Gary Snyder is, without a question, a person that one can look up to and become inspired by, whether it is through his writing or through his accomplishments in his life.