Shoot an arrow into the
secret heart of the monster
I once said. But the Airports
Skyscrapers Markets had no secrets
just more places that won’t die.
No use shooting there —
Seek the secret heart.
The core, the center, of the monster’s power
— not where you thought. It’s elsewhere,
hidden in a harmless-looking spot
If you’ve wiped somebody’s nose,
untied a knot, looked for a lost key
maybe a little bird
or mouse will point
and whisper in your ear,
shoot there
Gary Snyder is a Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and a California native. He has published numerous books of poetry and prose, including Danger on Peaks (Counterpoint Press, 2005); The Gary Snyder Reader (1952-1998) (1999); Mountains and Rivers Without End (1997); No Nature: New and Selected Poems (1993), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; The Practice of the Wild (1990); Left Out in the Rain, New Poems 1947-1985; Axe Handles (1983), for which he received an American Book Award; Turtle Island (1974), which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry; Regarding Wave (1970); and Myths & Texts (1960). Snyder has received an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Bollingen Prize, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, the Bess Hokin Prize and the Levinson Prize from Poetry, the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Times, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the Shelley Memorial Award. Snyder was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2003. He was the recipient of the 2012 Wallace Stevens Award for lifetime achievement by the Academy of American Poets.
