Gary Snyder: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Riprap

Fifty years ago this Fall a small press in Kyoto, Japan published an English language book of poems, Riprap, by an unknown, first-time poet and UC Berkeley graduate student, Gary Snyder. It was, along with Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, one of the books that launched the Beat Generation. It was also the most important book of American nature writing since John Muir’s The Mountains of California in 1890, a pioneering work in the brief history of the American Buddhist sensibility, and a set of poems that combined freedom and elegance in a way that opened up new pathways in modern poetry. Join us in celebrating this landmark in American literature and in the cultural life of California.