• The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989
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Gary Snyder reads a selection of poems that he chose to accompany the exhibition The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989. He reads from Ezra Pound’s Cathay, Arthur Waley’s No play Hagoromo, and select haikus by Beat writer Jack Kerouac. Snyder reads his own acclaimed work, “Endless Streams and Mountains,” which is illustrated by the very Chinese landscape handscroll painting that is the subject of this poem, and reads his translations of poems by the Tang recluse Hanshan from his celebrated Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems. A distinguished poet, essayist, environmentalist, and Zen Buddhist, Snyder won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1975 for Turtle Island; was a National Book Award finalist in 1992 for No Nature; and in 1996 won the Bollingen Poetry Prize for Mountains and Rivers Without End, which completed a series that he had begun writing in 1956. In 2008 he was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Selections of Gary Snyder readings can also be heard on the Guggenheim exhibition audio guide.

Gary Snyder, “Endless Streams and Mountains,” from Mountains and Rivers Without End, pp. 5–9. Copyright © 2008 by Gary Snyder from Mountains and Rivers Without End: Poem. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint.

Ezra Pound, "By The Bridge At Ten-Shin," from Personae. Copyright © 1926 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing.

Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountains, seven poems. Copyright © 2003 by Gary Snyder from Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint.

Jack Kerouac, Book of Haikus, 11 poems, 33 lines, pp. 14, 21, 65, 89, 93, and 97. Copyright © 2003 Penguin Books, New York

Arthur Waley, Hagoromo in The No Plays of Japan, 26 lines, pp. 225–26. Copyright © 1922  Alfred A. Knopf, New York

Gary Snyder, “Mu ch’i’s Persimmons.” © Gary Snyder

Philip Whalen, “Since You Ask Me," page 153; "To a Poet," page 155; and "Composition," page 356. From The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen, by Philip Whalen, edited by Michael Rothenberg. Copyright © 2007 by the Estate of Philip Whalen, published by Wesleyan University Press. Used by permission.

Streams and Mountains Without End, China, Jin dynasty, 1115–1234 (detail). Handscroll, ink and slight color on silk, overall: 35.1 x 1,103.78 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of the Hanna Fund 1953.126