Wang Ping is a Chinese-American academic, poet, writer, photographer, performance and multimedia artist. She is Professor of English Emerita at Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota. The US post-Beat poet Jim Cohn describes her as ‘a heart-daughter of Allen Ginsberg and a translator for him towards the end of his life’, adding ‘her own eco-orientation and activism has been, for me, a continuation of Snyder's prose and poetry as well as contemporary eco/climate change consciousness.’
Gary Snyder (b. 1930) is one of the major poetic voices of the post-war period, a fundamental figure in the expression of environmental ideas within contemporary verse. He has had lifelong associations with Zen Buddhism and commitments to the translation of Chinese and Japanese texts. Still active at 93, he has been described as the ‘Poet Laureate of Deep Ecology’. An early friend of an early influence on many of the Beat writers, Snyder was famously portrayed as the character Japhy Ryder in Jack Kerouac’s 1958 novel The Dharma Bums. He has published over 30 poetry collections, notably Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems (1959), Turtle Island (1974) and Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996).
Who did you meet?
I met Gary Snyder, plus Robert Creeley and John Ashberry
Where did you meet him?
I was the interpreter and translator for Allen Ginsberg, for his America and China Poetry Festival.
When did you meet him?
In 1980.
Pictured above: Gary Snyder’s collection Turtle Island from 1974
How did this meeting come about?
I was working as a translator and interpreter for the poetry festival, in NYC, and we toured in Pittsburg, Detroit and other places.
What did you discuss/talk about?
Poetry.
Pictured above: Wang Ping’s most recent poetry collection published in 2020 by Hanging Loose Press
What were your impressions of the Beat you met?
Easy going, laughing a lot, and passionate about life and poetry.
In the years since, has that meeting left any particular memories with you?
Lots. Please see my essay ‘Gary Snyder and Heart of the Child’.*
Are there any other thoughts you would like to share – e.g. were you already aware of this individual, have you read his work and, if so, what?
I taught Gary’s poetry for twenty years. We’re good friends.
*Note: Rock and the Beat Generation will run Wang Ping’s extended Gary Snyder essay in the near future.