Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Gary Snyder’s "The Market" explores the intersections of economy, labor, survival, and cultural exchange through the lens of various marketplaces across the world. The poem is a meditation on transactions—both literal and metaphorical—where commerce intertwines with tradition, sustenance, and the raw realities of human existence. Structured as a movement through different geographical spaces, Snyder shifts between personal memories, historical references, and sharp observational vignettes, binding these elements into a broad critique of consumption, inequality, and the nature of trade.

The poem opens with a recollection of "San Francisco / Heart of the city / down town the country side." This juxtaposition of urban and rural hints at a deeper entanglement of labor and distribution. He invokes John Muir, not in his usual role as a wilderness advocate, but as someone engaged in agricultural commerce: "up before dawn / packing pears in the best boxes / beat out the others—to Market." This early reference to competition in trade foreshadows the theme of markets as both a site of sustenance and ruthless economic survival. Snyder personalizes this by recalling his own childhood work: "Me, milk bottles by bike / Guernsey milk, six percent butterfat / raw and left to rise natural / ten cents a quart." The tactile realism of "slipped on the ice turning in to a driveway / and broke all nine bottles." introduces the precarious nature of small-scale labor, where one misstep leads to loss. This intimacy with food production—handling raw milk, tending cows—contrasts sharply with the distant, impersonal commerce of modern global markets.

From this personal recollection, Snyder expands outward, tracing the essence of markets in different cultural settings. He moves from Seattle to Saigon, where the market becomes a sensory overload of exchange: "Papayas banana sliced fish grated ginger / fruit for fish, meat for flowers / french bread for ladle steamer, tea." This rapid-fire list of goods reveals an almost poetic interdependence—things are not bought in isolation but as part of an intricate barter of necessity and ritual. There is a tenderness in "Beggars hang by the flower stall / give them all some." Markets here are not just economic spaces; they are social and moral landscapes, where generosity coexists with transaction.

The poem shifts again, this time to Kathmandu, where Snyder offers an extended meditation on equivalence: "Seventy-five feet hoed rows equals one hour / explaining power steering equals two big crayfish / = all the buttermilk you can drink = twelve pounds cauliflower." This section unfolds as a cascade of conversions, placing vastly different goods and services on an equal footing. A "lay in Naples" is listed alongside "hitchhiking from Ogden Utah to Burns Oregon," blending economic and intimate transactions into a single continuum. This surreal valuation of labor, travel, and goods critiques the arbitrariness of money—what determines worth when a "boxwood geisha comb" is equal to "the whole family at the movies"? The equation continues, incorporating "whipping dirty clothes on rocks three days some Indian river," showing the unseen labor that underpins everyday exchange.

As the poem moves to Varanasi, Snyder's depiction turns grimmer. The market is no longer just a site of commerce, but of suffering: "They eat feces in the dark on stone floors / one-legged monkeys, hopping cows / limping dogs blind cats / crunching garbage in the market." This imagery, far removed from the orderly transactions of earlier marketplaces, confronts the reader with the brutal inequality woven into global trade. The details become harsher: "dark scrotum spilled on the street / penis laid by his thigh / torso turns with the sun." This unsettling passage blurs the boundaries between the market as a place of goods and a site where human bodies—broken, discarded—become part of the refuse. Snyder does not provide a moral judgment but forces the reader to see the extremities of human existence within these spaces of trade.

The poem closes with a simple act: "I came to buy a few bananas by the Ganges while waiting for my wife." After the chaotic, often disturbing imagery of previous lines, this mundane moment serves as a return to the intimate, personal scale of commerce. The market, despite its contradictions, remains an inescapable part of daily life—providing, exploiting, sustaining, and depleting in equal measure.

Through its layered, shifting landscapes, "The Market" presents a vision of global commerce that is at once poetic and deeply critical. Snyder moves effortlessly between historical, cultural, and personal perspectives, revealing how markets are more than sites of trade—they are places where human desires, struggles, and inequalities intersect. Whether through a childhood memory of broken milk bottles, the frenetic barter of a Saigon street, or the haunting decay of a Varanasi market, Snyder captures the beauty and brutality of a world constantly engaged in exchange.

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