Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Gary Snyder’s "Soy Sauce" is a poem that transforms a seemingly mundane moment—helping build a house—into a meditation on memory, labor, and the deep interconnection between sensory experience and the natural world. The poem’s narrative is simple: the speaker, working on a construction project, catches the scent of soy sauce embedded in salvaged redwood planks, triggering a memory of a journey in Japan. Yet within this brief moment, Snyder weaves a profound reflection on time, place, and the way physical elements—wood, scent, and taste—carry history within them.

The poem opens with the speaker engaged in manual labor, “standing on a stepladder / up under hot ceiling / tacking on wire net for plaster.” Snyder establishes a scene of work, sweat, and focused effort, placing the reader in the midst of a day spent constructing something new. His work, however, is interrupted by an unexpected sensory trigger: “I catch a sour salt smell and come back / down the ladder.” The smell is potent enough to momentarily transport him away from the task at hand, suggesting an almost involuntary response, where memory overrides present action.

The source of the scent is revealed in a casual conversation: “Deer lick it nights” Holly says, referring to the redwood frame she is planing. The wood has absorbed the rich, salty remnants of its former life, as it once formed part of “a broken-up, two-thousand-gallon redwood / soy sauce tank from a company went out of business / down near San Jose.” Here, Snyder juxtaposes the practical reuse of materials with the unseen layers of history embedded in them. The redwood, now serving as part of a house, once held fermenting soy sauce, its fibers still carrying the pungent traces of its past. The deer, drawn to its salt, continue this cycle of connection, tasting what the speaker himself will soon recall in his memory.

This olfactory connection triggers a shift in time and place. “I lean over, sniff them, ah! it’s like Shinshu miso,” the speaker realizes, linking the scent of the wood to the rich, fermented miso of the Nagano uplands in Japan. This association brings forth a vivid memory of the past, transporting him to a journey long ago: “I see in mind my friend Shimizu Yasushi and me, / one October years ago, trudging through days of snow / crossing the Japan Alps and descending / the last night, to a farmhouse.” The immersion in memory is immediate and immersive, a sharp contrast to the hot, dusty California yard where he stands.

Snyder’s evocation of that night in Japan is brief but powerful. The memory of physical exertion—“trudging through days of snow”—merges seamlessly with the sensory relief of arrival: “taking a late hot bath in the dark—and eating / a bowl of chill miso radish pickles, / nothing ever so good!” The sharp, salty tang of the pickles mirrors the soy-scented wood, linking past and present in a single sensory thread. The poem suggests that flavor is more than just taste—it is a repository of experience, a bridge to moments long gone.

Returning to the present, the speaker finds himself once more in the yard, “hammer in hand,” back in the reality of construction work. But his perception has shifted; the wood is no longer just wood, the task no longer just labor. “But I know how it tastes / to lick those window frames / in the dark, / the deer.” The final lines play with the idea of both human and animal experience, suggesting a merging of perspectives. The deer, instinctively drawn to the salt in the wood, mirror the poet’s own sensory memory. The boundary between human and non-human is softened, with the deer’s primal licking of the wood standing in for Snyder’s own nostalgic recollection of pickles in Japan.

"Soy Sauce" exemplifies Snyder’s ability to find meaning in the everyday. What begins as a description of physical work unfolds into a meditation on the way the past lingers within the material world. The salvaged redwood is not merely repurposed timber; it holds the memory of soy sauce, of fermentation, of industrial decline. It also becomes a link between two landscapes—California and Japan—through shared sensations of salt, scent, and labor. The poem subtly acknowledges how physical tasks—building a house, hiking through snow, eating pickles—are imbued with deeper, often unspoken significance. Through its restrained, meditative tone and its effortless movement between present and past, "Soy Sauce" captures the intimate ways in which memory, sensory experience, and nature continually intersect.

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