Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Gary Snyder’s "Fence Posts" is a meditation on labor, practicality, and the ethics of choice, woven into a seemingly mundane task—building a fence. What begins as a consideration of fencing to accommodate horses becomes an exploration of values, efficiency, and the interconnections between human effort, economics, and the natural world. Snyder’s characteristic attentiveness to the materiality of work, his understated humor, and his ecological consciousness all shape the poem’s movement, transforming an ordinary decision into a quiet reflection on sustainability, compromise, and what it means to engage meaningfully with the land.

The poem’s structure follows a train of thought, moving organically through the speaker’s considerations without formal breaks or embellishments. Snyder presents the process of fencing in an unhurried, methodical manner, reflecting how such labor unfolds in real time. The opening lines—"It might be that horses would be useful / On a snowy morning to take the trail / Down the ridge to visit Steve or Mike and / Faster than going around the gravelled road by car."—suggest a return to older, slower modes of travel, hinting at a desire for a lifestyle more attuned to the rhythms of the land. This practical vision—using horses rather than cars—leads naturally to the idea of fencing part of the forest, but the focus quickly shifts to the specifics of materials, sourcing, and cost.

The speaker details how "Ron splits cedar rails and fenceposts / On Black Sands Placer road where he gets / These great old butt logs from the Camptonville sawmill." The specificity of location and process underscores Snyder’s deep engagement with the working landscape, where materials are not abstract commodities but part of a tangible, lived economy. The questioning tone—"Why they can't use them I don't know— / They aren't all pecky."—suggests a quiet skepticism toward industrial standards of usability, a recurring theme in Snyder’s work, where what is discarded by large systems often still holds value.

From here, the poem shifts toward a meditation on quality and consumer choice. The speaker acknowledges that he could have bought "all heartwood from the start," but resists the impulse to always seek the best: "But then I thought how it doesn't work / To always make a point of getting the best." This moment reveals Snyder’s broader philosophy—an ethic of not only frugality but also an attentiveness to what is overlooked or undervalued. He extends this to his grocery shopping habits, choosing "the worse and damaged looking fruit / And vegetables at the market because I know / I actually will enjoy them in any case." This simple act becomes a gesture of quiet resistance against a mindset that equates perfection with value, rejecting the wastefulness that comes with aesthetic preference.

The practicalities of fence-building return with the process of preserving sapwood posts: "You ought to soak to make sure they won't rot / In a fifty-five gallon drum with penta 10 to 1 / Which is ten gallons of oil and a gallon of / Termite and fungus poison." The detailed discussion of treatment methods, cost calculations, and trade-offs—using "old crankcase oil to dilute" rather than fresh oil—underscores the tension between efficiency and environmental impact. Snyder’s awareness of sustainability issues surfaces subtly: "but, There's not really enough old crank to go around." This recognition, almost an afterthought, signals a deeper acknowledgment of resource scarcity and the limits of even the most careful reuse.

The practical arithmetic of materials and labor—"So, soaking six posts a week at a time / The soaked pile getting bigger week by week, / But the oil only comes up one and a half feet."—leads to further cost analysis. The speaker considers adding kerosene to raise the soaking level, calculating an additional expense of "$3.50 to raise the soaking level up / Plus a half a can of penta more, six dollars, / For a hundred and twenty fence posts / On which I saved thirty dollars by getting the sapwood." These calculations reflect not just frugality but a deep awareness of the way small choices accumulate into larger impacts.

The poem closes with a reflection on value beyond pure cost: "But still you have to count your time, / A well-done fence is beautiful. / And horses, too." The final thought—"Penny wise pound foolish either way."—acknowledges the paradox of economic decisions. There is no perfect efficiency; saving money in one way often creates costs elsewhere, whether in time, labor, or longevity. Yet, this is not framed as frustration but rather as an inevitable reality of working with one’s hands, engaging with materials, and making choices that are practical but also deeply personal.

"Fence Posts" exemplifies Snyder’s ability to find poetry in the rhythms of work and the process of making decisions. The poem resists sentimentality while still expressing a deep reverence for materials, craft, and the interwoven economy of people and place. Through its patient detailing of fence-building, the poem expands into broader considerations—how we assign value, how we balance cost and ethics, and how the seemingly small choices we make in daily labor reflect our larger relationship with the world. In the end, the act of building a fence is not just about enclosing a space or accommodating horses; it is about engagement, decision-making, and the quiet beauty of doing something well, even when no choice is entirely free of compromise.

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