In his first collection of new poems since Axe Handles (1983), Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder shares 55 new poems and prose poems. As long-time readers will recognize, this collection is unique in Snyder's oeuvre, finding the poet experimenting with a wide variety of styles, including an extended foray into the Japanese form haibun, "making it an American form," as Snyder himself remarks. Some of the poet's most personal work is contained in two sections of poems exploring "intimate immediate life, gossip and insight." Danger on Peaks begins with the poet's first climb of Mount St. Helens on August 13, 1945, and his learning on the morning after his descent about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. The poet visits Mount St. Helens again in 2000 to view the blast site of the 1980 eruption. Then follow poems for the Buddhas of Bamiyan Valley and the World Trade towers. More than a mere gathering of unrelated poems, Danger on Peaks is a constructed work, where every part contributes to the whole.

"In his first gathering of new poetry since the 1996 book-length poem Mountains and Rivers Without End, Snyder seeks a kind of fraught peace, which he cannot sustain; the book begins and ends in upheaval. A mostly prose sequence recalls the recent history of Mount Saint Helens, the Washington State volcano whose eruption in 1980 has been recently (and for now, more softly) reprised. Snyder's speaker remembers climbing it decades ago and sees how flora and fauna are already returning there now: 'Who wouldn't take the chance to climb a snowpeak and get the long view?' Landscape, geology, botany and ecology; the poet's Buddhist outlook and its consequences for ethics, and the small pleasures of daily existence, inform the understated, short poems making up most of the volume. Snyder excels in adapting Japanese forms, such as haibun, to American usage. Many of his short poems recall the people — friends, lovers, a daughter — for whom Snyder cares or has cared, an attractive surprise in a poet known more for his rapport with nonhuman nature. Last come five short poems prompted by world events, including the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in spring 2001 and the terrorist attacks later that year: Snyder reminds us that humans are animals too, 'beings, living or not,' 'inside or outside of time.' (Oct.) " Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"The best of this new work explores the interplay between what's remembered, what's seen now and what may come." David Kirby, The New York Times Book Review

More than a mere gathering of unrelated poems, Danger on Peaks features the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet's most personal work, where every part contributes to the whole.