Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Gary Snyder’s "Way West, Underground" is a sweeping, nonlinear meditation on migration, mythology, and the deep-rooted connections between bears, humans, and landscapes. Moving across continents and time periods, the poem traces the westward movement of people, animals, and traditions, collapsing history and geography into a fluid, dreamlike continuity. Snyder employs his characteristic blending of ecological observation, Indigenous knowledge, and mythic resonance to construct a vision where nature and culture are inseparably intertwined.

The poem opens with an invocation of the Pacific Northwest: "The split-cedar smoked salmon cloudy days of Oregon, the thick fir forests." These lines immediately situate the reader in a world of elemental abundance—cedar, fish, mist, and towering trees. This is a world of subsistence and survival, where humans and animals exist in cycles of foraging, hunting, and seasonal rhythms. The shift to "Black Bear heads uphill in Plumas County, round bottom scuttling through willows—" grounds the poem in movement, reinforcing the theme of migration that will carry throughout. The bear, a recurring figure in Snyder’s work, serves as both a literal presence in the landscape and a symbolic force, representing both primal instinct and spiritual connection.

From the forests of Oregon and California, the poem follows "The Bear Wife" up the Pacific Coast, where blackberry brambles reclaim the land after burns, suggesting renewal and resilience. The imagery expands outward, linking North America to "foggy volcanoes on, to North Japan." This sudden geographical leap introduces the Ainu and Gilyak, Indigenous peoples of northern Japan and Siberia, whose traditions—including "bears & fish-spears"—echo those of the Pacific Northwest. By linking these cultures, Snyder gestures toward a deeper, transcontinental kinship, a shared relationship with bears and salmon that predates modern national boundaries.

The poem then introduces shamanic traditions, describing a "Mushroom-vision healer, single flat drum, from long before China. / Women with drums who fly over Tibet." Here, Snyder evokes the long history of animist and shamanic practices, where certain mushrooms—possibly Amanita muscaria—were used for vision quests and spiritual journeys. The "single flat drum" suggests the trance-inducing rhythms of Siberian and Tibetan shamans, figures who move between worlds, bridging the seen and unseen. The mention of "women with drums who fly over Tibet" recalls ancient female shamans, whose spiritual authority has largely been erased or suppressed by later patriarchal systems. This passage underscores Snyder’s fascination with pre-modern, non-hierarchical traditions, where spiritual power is often shared rather than centralized.

The poem’s trajectory continues westward, following forests, grasslands, and the movement of bears and foragers: "tracking bears and mushrooms, eating berries all the way." This line encapsulates an ancient mode of existence, where migration is dictated by food sources, ecological rhythms, and the presence of animal kin. The journey arrives in Finland, where Snyder experiences a sauna: "In Finland finally took a bath: like redwood sweatlodge on the Klamath." Here, he draws a parallel between the Finnish sauna and the Native American sweat lodge, reinforcing the idea that spiritual purification through heat and steam is a cross-cultural, ancient practice. The description of "all the Finns in moccasins and pointy hats with dots of white, netting, trapping, bathing, singing holding hands, the while see-sawing on a bench, a look of love—" captures a moment of communal ritual, where the body and spirit are renewed through shared experience.

The poem’s final movement enters deeper mythological territory, invoking the bear in its many cultural forms: "Karhu—Bjorn—Braun—Bear." These names—Finnish, Norse, and Germanic—reflect the bear’s presence in European traditions, where it was once revered before being largely exterminated. Snyder then interjects with a sudden, almost apocalyptic vision: "[lightning rainbow great cloud tree dialogs of birds] / Europa. ‘The West.’ the bears are gone except Brunhilde?” This passage suggests a loss of wildness in Europe, where bears have been driven out by civilization. Brunhilde, the Valkyrie from Norse mythology, becomes a possible remnant of that ancient power—one of the last bear-like figures, a warrior woman embodying strength and defiance.

Snyder’s reference to "elder wilder goddesses reborn—will race the streets of France and Spain with automatic guns—" takes on an ominous tone, suggesting that the suppressed energies of ancient feminine power may re-emerge violently in the modern world. This could be read as a critique of how Western civilization, in eradicating its older animist and nature-worshipping traditions, has created a cultural vacuum where power now manifests in armed resistance rather than in spiritual balance.

The poem’s final lines descend into the subterranean world: "in Spain, Bears and Bison, Red Hands with missing fingers, / Red mushroom labyrinths; lightning-bolt mazes, / Painted in caves, Underground." This is a direct reference to Paleolithic cave art, such as the paintings in Lascaux and Altamira, where early humans depicted animals, abstract symbols, and handprints—some with missing fingers, possibly signifying ritual initiation or shamanic transformation. The mention of "Red mushroom labyrinths" again connects to the use of psychedelic fungi in ancient rituals, reinforcing the idea that deep spiritual and ecological knowledge has been preserved in these underground sanctuaries.

"Way West, Underground" is a poem about movement—physical, historical, and spiritual. Snyder traces the migration of peoples, traditions, and ecological relationships, linking the forests of North America to the shamanic practices of Siberia, the sweat lodges of California to the saunas of Finland, and the ancient bear cults of Europe to the remnants of mythic female power. The journey westward, which in modern times has often signified colonial expansion and conquest, is here reframed as an older, more organic drift—one driven by foraging, by following bears and mushrooms, by moving in accordance with the land rather than against it.

The poem also suggests a deeper continuity between past and present, between the underground world of cave paintings and the modern world, where suppressed forces may be returning in unexpected ways. The reference to "elder wilder goddesses reborn—will race the streets of France and Spain with automatic guns—" hints at the disruptive consequences of a civilization that has severed itself from its older, wilder roots. The final return to the underground, to the painted caves of Ice Age Europe, suggests that these primal energies have never truly disappeared—they remain hidden, waiting, like bears in hibernation.

Snyder’s "Way West, Underground" is a poetic excavation of forgotten histories, tracing the ways in which land, myth, and migration have shaped human consciousness. Through its sweeping geographical range and mythic depth, the poem challenges the idea that modernity is a break from the past. Instead, it suggests that ancient patterns—of movement, of spiritual practice, of ecological connection—continue to shape us, even when buried beneath the surface. Whether in the tracks of migrating bears, the rituals of sauna and sweat lodge, or the red-painted labyrinths of prehistoric caves, the underground currents of our shared human and animal past persist, whispering beneath the surface of the present.

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