In an aside to one of his other remarks [in The Real Work: Interviews and Talks, 1964–1979], Gary Snyder implicitly criticizes the "stress on individual names" which characterizes the way we readers respond to our poets; he does so because he writes out of a tradition of self-effacement, and his yearnings are for a communal poetry rooted in place. But without a "name," poets aren't asked to do interviews, and without a big name such interviews are never collected into a book like Snyder's The Real Work: Interviews & Talks, 1964–1979. And, I think, it takes a very big name on such a collection to find readers, and to convince readers to be open enough to engage ideas like Snyder's, which lead, paradoxically, to self-effacement and no names. (p. 113)

In his introduction, Scott McLean suggests a Buddhist model for the nature of this talk: "The question-and-answer (Japanese: mondo) and the recorded...