Pamela Steed Hill
Pamela Steed Hill has had poems published in close to a hundred journals and is the author of In Praise of Motels, a collection of poems published by Blair Mountain Press. She is an associate editor for University Communications at The Ohio State University.
To understand and appreciate fully Gary Snyder's "Anasazi" we need to know something about the Native American people who are the subject of the poem. The Anasazi are thought to be ancestors of the modern Pueblo Indians, and they inhabited Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona from about 200 to 1300 A.D. They are remembered for their skills at horticulture, pottery making, basket weaving, and architecture, especially their "cliff houses." These dwellings - literally two- and three-story structures carved into the sides of steep cliffs and requiring ladders for entry and exit - replaced the partially underground homes where the Anasazi had lived for centuries. As they began to move to the cliffs and to expand their skills at masonry and architecture, the underground rooms were reserved as "kivas," or places to hold council or perform religious rituals. The most important aspect of Anasazi life, as well as of all Native American cultures, was their respect for the land they lived on and their ability to care for it and prosper from it without destroying it.
Gary Snyder himself was greatly influenced by Indian customs and lifestyle, and he patterned his own life and surroundings after them. With an interest in anthropology as well as poetry, he often combines the two areas in his work, frequently sending messages of pro-environmentalism through essays, lectures, and poems. In a 1977 collection of essays entitled The Old Ways, Snyder addresses the issues of technology and industrialization gone out of control. He defends a need for "modern" human beings to take a hard look at what we have done to the earth - to the trees, the soil, the mountains, the animals, the air - and to begin to reverse the damage by seeing our planet as a living organism. One way that each person can help turn things around, according to Snyder, is to "rein-habit this land with people who know they belong to it." By doing so, we will come to understand how we "live specifically in each place."
The poem "Anasazi" exemplifies a people who lived specifically in their place. They took time to get to know their region of the world, including the plants that grew there, the animals that lived there, the fish that filled the streams and rivers, and the best types of crops for the soil they had. These were people who truly could live off the land and did so without exploiting its resources. The Anasazi not only took care of the environment, but also celebrated it. Snyder's poem reveals and imitates this celebration through its soft, rhythmic cadence and its strong imagery. Each line reads as though it was written in reverence for the thing or person being described, and the mixture of human life, animal life, and nature is reflective of the poet's opinion on how all life should be lived.
Not only is the line "tucked up in clefts in the cliffs" a wonderful use of alliteration, but it also indicates how the Anasazi felt about their rock homes. Contrary to how people in contemporary society may view a seemingly harsh, rough existence, Snyder describes the Native Americans as "tucked up," a pleasant phrase connoting gentleness and comfort. The Anasazi were so in tune with the earth that they chose to live, literally, among its natural stone and craggy mountainsides. Their knowledge of the surrounding soil is evident in the fact that they were able to grow "strict fields of corn and beans" on terrain that would likely prove impossible for less skilled, less caring farmers. Snyder merges nature with spirituality in the lines "sinking deeper and deeper in earth / up to your hips in Gods," implying a religious connection between the people, the land, and a divine presence. He carries the union further by pairing human physical attributes to animals and natural phenomena: head and eagle-down; knees, elbows, and lightning; and eyes and pollen. The lines containing these elements describe a ritual taking place, probably in a kiva, since we know the underground rooms were converted for such after the Anasazi moved into the cliffs.
The concept of living specifically in a place and of being keenly aware of the nature that shares the space is nowhere more evident than in the middle three lines of the poem. "[T]he smell of bats. / the flavor of sandstone / grit on the tongue" present images that touch directly upon the senses and indicate how close the Anasazi people were to their environment. Most of us do not know what bats smell like because we don't live where bats live. Nor do we know what sandstone tastes like or how it feels on the tongue because we don't have reason to come into such close contact with it. While we may be able to imagine these sensations and to carry them even further into the senses of sight and sound - we can "see" bats in our minds and we can "hear" sandstone grinding in one's teeth - but the Anasazi knew them firsthand. Instead of "overtaking the land with" man-made comforts and bombarding the natural setting with unnatural inventions, these Native Americans got to know their environment as though it were a "neighbor" and came to live at peace with it.
For most people in industrialized, technology-centered nations today - and especially for the women - the idea of giving birth to a child without taking every measurement of comfort into consideration is unthinkable. From special beds to numbing drugs, we want to make childbirth as easy and painless as possible. Therefore, reading about "women / birthing / at the foot of ladders in the dark" can send chills down the spine of anyone who has been through, or can imagine going through, the process of having a baby. But this section of "Anasazi" is not there to horrify and dismay. Nor is it there to imply any complaints from the Indians about how and where the women gave birth. Instead, the image leads directly to a description of the surrounding natural beauty: "trickling streams," "hidden canyons," and "the cold rolling desert." Again the connection is made between human phenomena and natural phenomena, with a bit of ambiguity thrown in to make any separation even harder to distinguish. If our first notion is to see the "trickling streams in hidden canyons" line as a shift to a description of the natural setting, we may also consider it a continuation of the depiction of real childbirth. With the presence of both water and blood during birth, the use of "trickling streams" works as well as a metaphor as it does a simple description of a nearby creek or river. The point here is that there is an undeniable interconnectedness and interdependence between people and nature.
It is fitting that the poem ends with a new beginning, so to speak. The baby described in the last few lines signifies not only a new life among the Anasazi people, but also a new creation out of the union with nature. Here, the images are extremely brief and the syllabic pattern makes a very pronounced cadence, all in tune with the celebratory effect of the poem. The four distinct images - "corn basket," "wide-eyed," "red baby," and "rock lip home" - may be seen as separate entities, but more likely there is an intentional pairing of the object with the human. That is, corn basket pairs with wide-eyed and red baby pairs with rock lip home. This match-up would be in keeping with the blending of people and environment that we find throughout the poem. On the literal level, this string of images tells us that the wide-eyed newborn will be carried to its home in the cliffs in a corn basket. The Anasazi, we recall, were excellent basket weavers, and their wares served a variety of purposes, from toting crop yields to infants. And on the metaphorical level, these words illuminate the necessary alliance between humankind - from infancy on - and the world around us.
Even with an understanding of the history of the Anasazi culture, some readers may find Gary Snyder's poem difficult because it seems disjointed or incomplete. But the style and the presentation lend themselves well to what the poet is trying to convey. His ability to select just the right words and brief phrases to portray an entire philosophy and lifestyle is actually more effective than belaboring the points with long, explanatory sentences and a didactic, or "preachy," defense. With such exact imagery and unadorned detail, the poet simply shows us a picture of true environmentalism and of how one group of people accomplished living in harmony with nature.
The theme of "Anasazi" is not unique in the world of poetry. Countless poets over the centuries have penned verses of praise for the natural world, including many in more recent times who have used the venue to make social statements in favor of environmentalism. What makes Snyder's poem a bit different is that his subject is not just about respecting the earth or convincing people that nature is beautiful and worth protecting. Rather, this poet writes from a perspective of an absolute necessity for human beings to pay critical attention to their relationship with the natural world. The Anasazi people not only recognized that their existence depended upon nature, but they knew that nature depended on them as well. In the poem, this is demonstrated by the continuous blending of people, animals, earth, rocks, and so forth. With such an interweaving tie between all living things, Snyder makes a very strong case for taking our current notion of environmentalism to a much higher level.
Read the rest of this Literature Guide with our Anasazi Access Pass.
