stop punching those keys, jack

There's a nice profile of the poet Gary Snyder in this week's Nueva Jorker (20 Oct). I don't have a huge affection for those who came to be known as the Beats, although I like some of it. I always put off reading Gary Snyder because of guilt by association. The profile points out that he himself was somewhat upset about this association, and annoyed at Kerouac (although annoyed in the ever so precise and peaceful way that someone who studied Zen can be annoyed), and in reality there wasn't a whole hell of a lot that they had in common other than some days of friendship spent together, and a notorious day of climbing a hill which Kerouac wrote about, only thinly disguising Snyder.

I've always mistrusted the accuracy of labels on literary movements that are invented after the fact for our convenience (or, for example, the comically short-sighted way Pound came up with the name Modernism). Sartre and Camus as existentialists, for example. They were different enough to have a fued and break off their friendship, so there may have been a trend or some similarities, but to group them together is just laziness. 

So I'm looking forward to reading some Snyder. I have an intuition that he may be similar to A. R. Ammons, although I have serious doubts whether anyone can outverse Ammons, one of the most pleasurable poets I've ever read. We shall see.