Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Gary Snyder’s "Finding the Space in the Heart" is a poem of movement, memory, and meditation, weaving together personal history, ecological awareness, and Zen insight. It unfolds across decades and landscapes, tracing the poet’s evolving relationship with the vast, empty spaces of the American West, while subtly invoking the philosophical undercurrents that inform his work. The poem is a journey in itself, leading from youthful wanderlust to a deeper understanding of impermanence and interconnection.

The poem opens with an image of the poet in the 1960s, traveling with “a fierce gay poet and a / lovely but dangerous girl with a husky voice” in a Volkswagen camper. The trio descends from Canada into the rugged, arid landscapes of the American West—Grand Coulee, the Blue Mountains, the Alvord Desert. The names alone evoke a sense of vastness and desolation, places shaped by geological forces and inhabited by ghosts of ancient ecosystems. Snyder’s list-like approach, naming these regions as though marking a route on a map, gives the passage a documentary feel, capturing a specific moment in time when the countercultural movement sought meaning in nature and the road.

The first real epiphany arrives when they reach “silvery flats that curved over the edge,” an empty, luminous space that sparks an insight: “O, ah! The / awareness of emptiness / brings forth a heart of compassion!” This moment, echoing Buddhist teachings, sets the thematic foundation for the poem. The emptiness of the landscape is not merely physical—it is a state of mind, an invitation to relinquish attachments, to recognize the world’s transience, and, paradoxically, to embrace it fully.

From here, the poem follows Snyder’s return visits over the decades, each marked by a different stage of life. In the 1970s, he recklessly drives into the desert and gets stuck, “scared the kids,” experiencing nature’s indifference firsthand. In the 1980s, he returns with his lover, walking the hills and finding inscriptions left by an “old desert sage”—phrases like “Stomp out greed” and “The best things in life are not things”. These words, placed anonymously in the landscape, suggest an ongoing dialogue between past and present, a continuation of the wisdom Snyder himself has sought in nature and poetry.

The middle section of the poem expands into deep time, referencing “long gone Lake Lahontan”, a prehistoric body of water, and “Columbian Mammoth bones” found on its ancient shoreline. This shift from personal memory to geological history underscores the poem’s meditation on impermanence. The land itself holds the imprints of vanished ecosystems, just as the poet leaves his own ephemeral tracks on the playa.

The imagery intensifies as Snyder drives out onto the “bone-gray dust”, embracing a space where “no waters, no mountains, no / bush no grass” exist. The description dissolves into paradox, negation reinforcing boundlessness: “No flatness because no not-flatness. / No loss, no gain.” The speaker arrives at a Zen realization, where the mind ceases to grasp at distinctions and simply rests in the openness. This is the “space in the heart”—a place beyond judgment, where experience is immediate and unfiltered.

The poem then pivots to a moment of intimacy: “We meet heart to heart, / leg hard-twined to leg, / with a kiss that goes to the bone.” In the midst of emptiness, there is deep connection. Love is not separate from the vast, impersonal landscape; it is an extension of it. The following dawn, the poet sees “the tooth / of a far peak called King Lear”, an allusion that layers Shakespearean tragedy onto the landscape’s grandeur.

The closing lines situate Snyder in the 1990s, now older, with “my lover’s my wife” and a new generation of children in the circle, “eating grasshoppers grimacing, / singing sūtras for the insects in the wilderness”. This communal, ritualistic act—eating insects, acknowledging their lives—embodies a Buddhist reverence for all beings, no matter how small. The “foolish loving spaces” of the title become manifest in this moment: to love the world, even in its emptiness, is an act of devotion and joy.

The poem concludes with a return to Snyder’s signature motifs: “Walking on walking, / under foot earth turns”—a continuation of his belief in process, movement, and the cyclical nature of existence. The final lines liken poetry to calligraphy: “But the wet black brush / tip drawn to a point, / lifts away.” Just as a brushstroke completes itself and departs from the page, so too does every moment, every journey, every life.

"Finding the Space in the Heart" is a profound meditation on time, love, and impermanence. It chronicles personal history while situating the poet’s experiences within the grand sweep of geological and evolutionary change. The desert, with its vast stillness, becomes both a physical place and a metaphor for clarity of mind. Snyder’s engagement with landscape is not passive observation but an ongoing practice of dwelling, listening, and learning. The poem invites the reader to step into that space—not to conquer it, but to recognize it as part of themselves.

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