[The essay from which this excerpt is taken was written as an introduction to The Real Work in August 1979.]

In 1969 Gary Snyder published a collection of journal excerpts, reviews, translations, and essays under the title Earth House Hold. (p. xi)

Thematically and structurally the interviews and talks gathered in [The Real Work: Interviews and Talks, 1964–1979] complement and extend the positions taken in Earth House Hold. A line can be traced in the earlier prose collection from Snyder's first statements on poetics in the "Lookout's Journal" to the essay "Suwa-no-se Island and the Banyan Ashram," celebrating a sense of community that has been lost all too long. A similar line can be followed in The Real Work, from Snyder's comments on the complementary nature of inner and outer realities explored in his poetry to the talk "Poetry, Community, & Climax." But whereas the relationship between poetry and community was only...