***This paperback edition has a new introduction by the author and updated content.

This is the first volume of North Atlantic Books’ updated paperback edition of Dale Pendell’s Pharmako trilogy, an encyclopedic study of the history and uses of psychoactive plants and related synthetics first published between 1995 and 2005. The books form an interrelated suite of works that provide the reader with a unique, reliable, and often personal immersion in this medically, culturally, and spiritually fascinating subject. All three books are beautifully designed and illustrated, and are written with unparalleled authority, erudition, playfulness, and range.

Pharmako/Poeia: Plant Powers, Poisons, and Herbcraft includes a new introduction by the author and as in previous editions focuses on familiar psychoactive plant-derived substances and related synthetics, ranging from the licit (tobacco, alcohol) to the illicit (cannabis, opium) and the exotic (absinthe, salvia divinorum, nitrous oxide). Each substance is explored in detail, not only with information on its history, pharmacology, preparation, and cultural and esoteric correspondences, but also the subtleties of each plant’s effect on consciousness in a way that only poets can do. The whole concoction is sprinkled with abundant quotations from famous writers, creating a literary brew as intoxicating as its subject.

The Pharmako series is continued in Pharmako/Dynamis (focusing on stimulants and empathogens) and Pharmako/Gnosis (which addresses psychedelics and shamanic plants).

The team of the best-selling The High Sierra of California presents a poetic tribute to the mountain's unique natural, cultural and historical dimensions complemented by decades of artwork and selections from the writings of classic authors. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Turtle Island.

€ 46,20

In 1964, Hudson landed in Unalaska, a 1,000-mile chain of treeless and windswept islands. In his intimate memoir, he weaves together landscape and language, storytelling and silence, ancient mythology and day-to-day village life as he pays homage to the people he came to know.

Il premio Pulitzer Gary Snyder, cantore della 'natura selvatica' e poeta ispiratore della beat generation, propone con questo studio una visione inedita dell'ecologia, un nuovo pensiero globale sulla natura. I nativi americani della West Coast provocano piccoli incendi pilotati per conservare intatto il rigoglio delle foreste. I saggi della raccolta ruotano intorno a questa immagine, metafora di un progresso armonico e non distruttivo, per offrire al lettore una risposta possibile e praticabile al bisogno di rinnovamento e purificazione, necessario all'emersione della nostra identità selvatica e alla nascita di un pensiero nuovo. Sono scritti autobiografici e universali, perché il pensiero di Snyder nasce sempre dall'esperienza personale, dall'incontro con gli uomini e con la terra che abitano. Dal Giappone, dove entra in contatto con lo Zen, alle foreste della Sierra Nevada, l'autore costruisce un percorso di consapevolezza interiore e invita, nel rumore assordante della civiltà attuale, ad ascoltare la voce della natura, che è anche la nostra voce, la più profonda.

Combining the dramatic and meticulous work of printmaker Tom Killion--accented by quotes from John Muir--and the journal writings of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder, The High Sierra of California is a tribute to the bold, jagged peaks that have inspired generations of naturalists, artists, and writers. For over thirty years, Tom Killion has been backpacking the High Sierra, making sketches of the region stretching from Yosemite south to Whitney and Kaweah Crest, which he calls 'California's backbone.' Using traditional Japanese and European woodcut techniques, Killion has created stunning visual images of the Sierra that focus on the backcountry above nine thousand feet, accessible only on foot. Accompanying these riveting images are the journals of Gary Snyder, chronicling more than forty years of foot travels through the High Sierra backcountry. 'Athens and Rome, good-bye!' writes Snyder, as he takes us deep into the mountains on his daily journeys around Yosemite and beyond. Originally printed in a limited, handmade, letterpress edition, The High Sierra of California is now available in an affordable, full-color trade edition.

The sayings in A Zen Forest, translated by Soiku Shigematsu, were selected from Kuzoshi (A Zen Forest Saying Anthology) compiled in the late fifteenth century by the Japanese master Toyo Eichi Zenji (1428-1504), and from Zuddoko (The Poison-Painted Drum), edited by Genro Fujita (1880-1935), the first volume of which was published in 1916. Even today, students of the koan are expected to keep on hand at least one copy of each of these handbooks. Essential companions to all Zen followers, the handbooks consist of verses from Zen classics, sutras, and the poetry of T'ang and Sung China. The selections in this volume are basic, inspiring and timeless, with each entry revealing some phase of satori and Zen life. Although Zen followers believe that words are stakes that will bind you unless you free yourself from them, they also recognize that they are the only way to universalize and eternalize human experiences. This book does both.

When Gary Snyder applied for the position of fire lookout for the U.S. Forest Service in Washington state in 1952 he wrote in his letter, 'So I would like your highest, most remote, and most difficult-of-access lookout.' He got the job and was sent to Crater Mountain Lookout, the most remote outpost in Washington. But this wasn't his first encounter with dangerous peaks.
This book, Snyder's first collection of new poems in twenty years, begins with poems about an earlier climb - Snyder's first ascent of Mount St. Helens in 1945. He learned of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the morning of his descent, from newspapers delivered to forestry offices on the slopes of the mountain. Climbing, mountain and backwoods encounters begun in those early years of his life set the tone and provided much of the substance for what has followed in the remarkable life of one of America's most revered poets.
Danger on Peaks contains work in a surprising variety of styles, creating an arc-shaped trail from those earliest climbs to what the poet calls poems 'of intimate immediate life, gossip and insight' (some of the poet's most personal work ever). Included are poems that work with the magical lyrics of Old Man Coyote and poems in an American / Japanese hybrid, a form of haibun, 'haiku plus prose,' which will remind readers as much of William Carlos Williams as Basho. The book ends with poems for the Buddhas of Bamiyan Valley, which were blown up by the Taliban, and the World Trade Towers.

Gary Snyder fa parte di quella categoria di persone che dire preziose per l'umanità è poco. Si potrebbe definire uno scout, un esploratore in avanscoperta, alla ricerca di altre possibilità, comportamenti e orizzonti per il genere umano - soprattutto oggi che i buoni propositi e le speranze per un mondo migliore non sembrano sufficienti a contrastare il 'seme degenerato' dell'avere/potere costi-quel-che-costi. Le sue non sono fumose teorizzazioni o mondi virtuali di là da venire, ma acute percezioni e utili informazioni per rinnovare noi stessi e la cultura attraverso l'apprezzamento di ciò che la natura da sempre ci ricorda, e cioè: la nostra interpenetrazione con essa e l'intima relazione delle parti.

Selections from the works of the award-winning author include original poetry, translations of Chinese poetry, journal entries, interviews, and essays

Folklore. Mythology. With an introduction by Gary Snyder and a foreward by the editor. John Smelcer, himself of Ahtna descent, here collects 26 tales from his tribe, also known as the Copper River Indians of Alaska. Raven, Loon, Mouse, Owl, Porcupine, Spider Woman, Rabbit, Fox, Wolf and others, these stories can serve as an introduction (and a prelude) to the rich oral traditions of the Ahtna Athabaskans of Alaska's Copper River. (James Kari) Dale Seeds comments that with its maps, photographs, and biographies (of storytellers), it offers a unique insight into the oral narrative through both a sense of place and personalities. It is an important voice...

"The greatest of living nature poets. . . . It helps us to go on, having Gary Snyder in our midst."--Los Angeles Times. Snyder is the author of many volumes of poetry and prose, including The Practice of the Wild and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Turtle Island. Reading tour.

Beneath a Single Moon is an extraordinary collection of the work of forty-five contemporary American poets—with over 250 poems and thirty essays on the influence of spiritual practice on the practice of poetry. Included are works by John Cage, Diane di Prima, Allen Ginsberg, Jane Hirshfield, Andrew Schelling, Gary Snyder, Anne Waldman, and others.