RE-INHABITING THE ISLANDS - The University of North Carolina at ...

65
Contemporary environmental problems convinced Snyder that his work needed to be
directly engaged in these topical matters, such as Lake Erie‘s ecological death and the
burning of its tributary, the Cuyahoga River. Bert Almon observes that Snyder‘s
―philosophical position is now [1977] influenced by the Vajrayana sect,‖ a Tantric school
that engaged practitioners with the very reality, samsara, from which ―most Hindu and
Buddhist sects seek detachment,‖ (Almon 83). The lyric poem ―Call of the Wild‖ clearly
confirms Snyder‘s tough assessment of Western society. Looking upward as military jets
arc across the sky, he muses about the competition between ―non-farmer jet-set
bureaucrats‖ (―Mother Earth‖ 48) and low-impact reinhabitants of the region: ―WE
SHALL SEE WHO KNOWS HOW TO BE‖ (―Call of the Wild‖ 81).
The poem ―I Went into the Maverick Bar‖ (Snyder 9) demonstrates his
application of trans-Pacific knowledge to the local question of how to be on Turtle Island.
The Maverick Bar near Farmington, New Mexico reminds the poem‘s speaker of ―High
School dances,‖ ―Madras, Oregon,‖ where he worked as a logger, and the ―short-haired
joy and roughness‖ of American ―stupidity.‖ Biographically, the poem narrates Snyder‘s
visit to an actual Maverick Bar in Farmington, a ―redneck‖ place ―full of Texans‖ near
the Four Corners, on his way to research industrial strip mining on Black Mesa
(MacAdams and Dorr). The OED states that the word maverick comes from the
nineteenth century Texas politician, Samuel Augustus Maverick, whose immense
(neglected) herds would wander unbranded (―Maverick‖). His neighbors would take up
the unclaimed waifs and brand them. These unbranded cattle came to be called
mavericks. The term quickly became associated with independent-mindedness and
individualism. However, the title of the poem is ironic; the cowboy patrons, waitresses,