When Making An Axe Handle The Pattern

True Affluence Is Not Needing Anything.

But If You Do Know What Is Taught By Plants And Weather, You Are In On The Gossip And Can Feel Truly At Home. The Sum Of A Field's Forces [become] What We Call Very Loosely The 'spirit Of The Place.' To Know The Spirit Of A Place Is To Realize That You Are A Part Of A Part And That The Whole Is Made Or Parts, Each Of Which In A Whole. You Start With The Part You Are Whole In.

I See A Vision Of A Great Rucksack Revolution Thousands Or Even Millions Of Young Americans Wandering Around With Rucksacks, Going Up To Mountains To Pray, Making Children Laugh And Old Men Glad, Making Young Girls Happy And Old Girls Happier, All Of 'em Zen Lunatics Who Go About Writing Poems That Happen To Appear In Their Heads For No Reason And Also By Being Kind And Also By Strange Unexpected Acts Keep Giving Visions Of Eternal Freedom To Everybody And To All Living Creatures.

As A Poet I Hold The Most Archaic Values On Earth . . . The Fertility Of The Soil, The Magic Of Animals, The Power-vision In Solitude, The Terrifying Initiation And Rebirth, The Love And Ecstasy Of The Dance, The Common Work Of The Tribe. I Try To Hold Both History And The Wilderness In Mind, That My Poems May Approach The True Measure Of Things And Stand Against The Unbalance And Ignorance Of Our Times.

In The Belly Of The Furnace Of Creativity Is A Sexual Fire; The Flames Twine About Each Other In Fear And Delight. The Same Sort Of Coiling, At A Cooler, Slower Pace, Is What The Life Of This Planet Looks Like. The Enormous Spirals Of Typhoons, The Twists And Turns Of Mountain Ranges And Gorges, The Waves And The Deep Ocean Currents - A Dragonlike Writhing.