The Time Being of Gary Snyder’s “Stories in the Night”

Abstract

“In Native California the winter was a storytelling time.” 1 This is how “Stories in the Night” begins. The poem comes from the section “Locals” from Gary Snyder’s recent book of poems This Present Moment (2015). I first listened to the poem during the poet’s reading in May 2013, at Miłosz Festival in Cracow, two years before the book actually came out. That morning discussion panel with the poet Gary Snyder was chaired by Professor Tadeusz Sławek[…]