From Publishers Weekly
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." Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Snyder's first all-new collection since Axe Handles (1983) takes its title from the last line of a little poem about first seeing Carole, now his wife. It reveals one appetite flaring, ever so subtly, in the mundane precincts of another: he's dishing out a meal, she's receiving it, and he glimpses "her lithe leg," obviously "trained by . . . danger on peaks." This sort of thing happens all the time, of course, but how often is it this well captured? In these poems of his sixties and early seventies, Snyder often works such magic, in poems as compact as those of the Japanese masters he has long studied and in prose-and-verse pieces as crystalline as those in the famous travel books of Basho. From the opening prose-and-verse section on several climbs of Mount St. Helens, through short poems of observation and longer ones on daily life, to more prose-and-verse pieces on journeys near and far, Snyder seems more accepting than ever before. His 1960s eco-Marxist scolding is gone, and he's the wiser for it. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Oregonian, August 29, 2004
For those new to Snyder, it offers a glimpse into the life of a remarkable poet engaged with his world.

San Francisco Chronicle—Best Books of 2004, December 2004
Danger on Peaks gives us a changed, more reflective Snyder, one who maintains a core of joyous acceptance.

Book Description
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.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When Gary Snyder applied for the position of fire lookout for the U.S. Forest Service in Washington State in 1952 he wrote in his letter, "So I would like your highest, most remote, and most difficult-of-access lookout." He got the job and was sent to Crater Mountain Lookout, the most remote outpost in Washington. But this wasn't his first encounter with dangerous peaks. This book, Snyder's first collection of new poems in twenty years, begins with poems about an earlier climb -- Snyder's first ascent of Mount St. Helens in 1945. He learned of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the morning of his descent, from newspapers delivered to forestry offices on the slopes of the mountain. Climbing, mountain and backwoods encounters begun in those early years of his life set the tone and provided much of the substance for what has followed in the remarkable life of one of America's most revered poets.

Danger on Peaks contains work in a surprising variety of styles, creating an arc-shaped trail from those earliest climbs to what the poet calls poems "of intimate immediate life, gossip and insight" (some of the poet's most personal work ever). Included are poems that work with the magical lyrics of Old Man Coyote and poems in an American / Japanese hybrid, a form of haibun, "haiku plus prose," which will remind readers as much of William Carlos Williams as Basho. The book ends with poems for the Buddhas of Bamiyan Valley, which were blown up by the Taliban, and the World Trade Towers. Danger on Peaks is a constructed work where every part contributes to the whole. Snyder writes, "We're loose on earth / half a million years / our weird blast spreading --"

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

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.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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