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

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and ―country-and-western band‖ are more like unclaimed waifs than self-made
individuals. The bar patrons have an American lack of tradition, which upon inspection
turns out to be nothing but a neon-lit nostalgia for cowboys, big sky country, and the high
school prom. Snyder foregrounds the bitterness of this irony by stating ―I could almost
love you [America] again.‖ The poem resolves outside the bar, as the speaker gazes at the
bluffs ―under the tough old stars,‖ where the poet turns back to ―the real work,‖ 40 the
concrete particulars of survival. Defining this question of praxis during an interview for
the Ohio Review with Paul Geneson, Snyder says, ―the problem is, where do you put your
feet down, where do you raise your children, what do you do with your hands‖ (Real
Work 55). The castaway‘s path home is not through rescue, but through his or her ability
to act as if his or her life raft is the Tsimtsum. Snyder‘s post-Tsimtsum quest ended when
he stopped searching and began his critical work at home, living as a representative
Turtle Islander. He built his exemplary home Kitkitdizze in the Sierras, 41 founded the
Ring of Bone Zendo in Nevada City, 42 and served on the California Arts Council. The
poet embodied the praxis of his bioregional reinhabitation by placing his feet in a chosen
place and setting his hands to work incorporating ―his own labor with the materials‖ of
his poetry (Handley 6).
The process of place-making transforms abstract Cartesian space into a
geographic area ―seen, heard, smelled, imagined, loved, hated, feared, revered‖ (Walter
142). The process of space becoming place is synonymous with history (Buell, Future of
40 The following line, ―what is to be done,‖ refers to an essay of the same title by Lenin
about the formation of the Bolshevik revolution.
41 See Yamazato, ―Kitkitdizze, Zendo, and Place‖ and Snyder, ―Kitkitdizze: a Node in the
Net‖ Place in Space.
42 See Snyder, ―A Brief Account of the Ring of Bone Zendo, I.‖