Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Gary Snyder’s "Three Deer One Coyote Running in the Snow" is a poem of sudden motion, brief wonder, and the instinct to read the land as a text. In characteristic fashion, Snyder strips the moment to its essentials, presenting the unfolding drama of predator and prey in stark, unembellished terms. The poem captures the tension between stillness and movement, between observation and participation, and ultimately between the fleeting nature of wild encounters and the desire to decipher their traces.

The poem begins with pure action: "First three deer bounding and then coyote streaks / right after tail flat out." There is no prelude, no setting of the scene—just an immediate immersion in a chase, the kind of swift, unthinking event that defines the natural world. The verbs—"bounding," "streaks,"—convey energy, while the phrase "tail flat out" paints the coyote in full pursuit, stretched to its limit, locked into its role as a predator. The sentence structure, without punctuation to slow it, mirrors the chase’s urgency.

Then, a contrast: "I stand dumb a while / two seconds blankly / black-and-white of trees and snow." Where the deer and coyote are pure movement, the speaker is pure stillness, caught in the shock of witnessing. "Dumb," "blankly,"—the words suggest a mind momentarily emptied, overwhelmed by the clarity of the scene. The mention of "black-and-white of trees and snow" transforms the image into something stark and elemental, as if the world has been momentarily reduced to pure form, pure contrast. This line evokes the simplicity of ink-brush painting, a monochrome rendering of a wild instant where motion and landscape merge.

The poem’s middle turn comes with the return of the coyote: "Coyote's back! good coat, fluffy tail, sees me: quickly gone." The exclamation—"Coyote’s back!"—reintroduces motion, a new presence that momentarily disrupts the frozen observer. The coyote, having either failed in its pursuit or circled back, makes eye contact with the speaker before disappearing again. "Sees me: quickly gone." The colon creates an equation—perception equals departure. This moment is not an invitation; it is a recognition followed by retreat. The wild does not linger under human gaze.

Then the shift: "Later: I walk through where they ran to study how that news all got put down." The tone changes from passive witness to active participant. The chase is over, the moment has passed, but the speaker does not simply let it go. The phrase "how that news all got put down" treats the snowy landscape as a record, a place where motion has left its traces. Snyder’s use of "news" suggests that the world itself is constantly writing, that events unfold in ways that can be read—if one knows how to look.

"Three Deer One Coyote Running in the Snow" is a poem of immediacy and reflection, where the raw force of a chase is balanced by the quiet attempt to understand it after the fact. The poem resists romanticizing nature or imposing a human narrative onto it; instead, it simply records, allowing the stark beauty of the moment to stand. Yet, in that final line, Snyder reminds us that every movement leaves its imprint, that the world speaks in signs left behind. The poet, like a tracker, follows, not to interfere but to understand, to learn the language of snow and pawprints, the unspoken news of the land.

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