Monika Kocot
Adventures in Mind and Landscape: Poetics of Emptiness in Gary Snyder and Kenneth White
Polish Journal for American Studies, vol. 19 (2025), pp. 81-99

Abstract: In his illuminating essay on Gary Snyder entitled The Tribal Dharma, Kenneth White, the founding father of the geopoetic project (Scottish Centre for Geopoetics and International Institute of Geopoetics in Paris), traces Snyder’s poetic and spiritual inspirations, and attempts to show Snyder’s journey from the Beat Generation’s an-arche, Native American mythology, and various schools of Buddhism, to his “Dharma Revolution.” Even though White writes about Snyder’s poems (“the variety of paths they follow, and the range of territory they cover”), one cannot help thinking that he is coming back again and again to certain themes and tropes that (will) feature prominently in his own work: whiteness, emptiness, Śūnyatā, incandescence, thusness—to mention just a few. This article offers a comparative analysis of White’s and Snyder’s geopoetics. The emphasis is placed on the poems/essays which show how White’s and Snyder’s visions converge, and how they reflect their spiritual practice of emptiness inspired by Ch’an and Zen philosophy and poets of China and Japan.

Keywords: Gary Snyder, Kenneth White, geopoetics, emptiness, Buddhism, interbeing

DOI: 10.7311/PJAS.19/2025.07

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