5/11/98

CONTACT: Diane Manuel, News Service (650) 725-1945;
e-mail dmanuel@leland.stanford.edu

Symposium on May 16 to discuss Gary Snyder's epic poem

A symposium will conclude the year-long Mellon Foundation Graduate Research Workshop on Gary Snyder's long poem, Mountains and Rivers Without End, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, May 16, in Building 320, room 105.

The Humanities Center symposium is free and open to the public.

The workshop began on Oct. 9 when Snyder read his poem in Kresge Auditorium. Since then, 15 scholars have presented lectures to the workshop on various aspects of the poem.

The final symposium will focus on "Ethics and Aesthetics at the Turn of the 50th Millennium: Gary Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End." Panelists will address the key question "How might living with art enable us to live better with one another and the more-than-human world?"

Speakers include ecologist and philosopher David Abram; Jim Dodge, assistant professor of English at California State University-Humboldt; Robert Hass, professor of English at the University of California-Berkeley and former U.S. Poet Laureate; Anthony Hunt, professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico; Stephanie Kaza, associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Vermont; Theodore Roszak, professor of history at California State University-Hayward; storyteller Nanao Sakaki; hydraulics engineer Philip Williams; Katsunori Yamazato, professor of American literature at the University of Ryukyus, Okinawa; and Snyder.

Snyder and Sakaki also will hold a poetry reading at the Bookstore at 4 p.m. Friday, May 15.

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By Diane Manuel