Some San Francisco Renaissance Poets Part Two Summary

Gary Snyder is a poet from Oregon who studies Indian cultures and Buddhist traditions. Snyder gives his impressions of working by himself at a mountain lookout camp in "Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout." In "Milton by Firelight," Snyder questions the usefulness of Milton's stories when everything will be fundamentally changed through time. Snyder sympathizes with infertile women in "In Praise of Sick Women." In "Night Highway Ninety-Nine," Snyder describes hitchhiking from the far northwest to San Francisco. Snyder writes small details of each town he passes through such as drunk Indians in Mount Vernon and buying buttermilk in Portland. Snyder also describes the people he travels with at different points, like a whore from Los Angeles and two Pentecostal boys. Snyder becomes excited as he approaches San Francisco but feels anonymous...