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Poet Gary Snyder is the winner of the 2008 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Established in 1986 and presented annually by the Poetry Foundation, the award is one of the most prestigious given to American poets, and at $100,000 it is one of the nation’s largest literary awards. Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry magazine and chair of the selection committee, made the announcement today. The prize will be presented at an evening ceremony at the Arts Club of Chicago on Thursday, May 29.
In announcing the award, Wiman said: “Gary Snyder is in essence a contemporary devotional poet, though he is not devoted to any one god or way of being so much as to Being itself. His poetry is a testament to the sacredness of the natural world and our relation to it, and a prophecy of what we stand to lose if we forget that relation.”
The Rabbit
Gary SnyderA grizzled black-eyed rabbit showed me
……………………………….
…irrigation ditches, open paved highway,
………white line
…to the hill. bell
…chill blue jewel sky
……..banners
Banner clouds flying,
The mountains all gathered,
..juniper trees on the flanks
……..cone buds,
…..the snug bark scale
…….in thin powder snow
…..over rock scrabble, pricklers, boulders,
..pines and junipers,
…..singing.
The trees all singing.The mountains are singing
To gather the sky and the mist
..to bring it down snow-breath
……ice-banners,
..and gather it water
Sent from the singing peaks
….flanks and folds
Down arroyos and ditches by highways the water
The people to use it, the
….mountains and juniper
Do it for men,
……………
Said the rabbit.//