Four Poems for Robin

Gary Snyder’s “Four Poems for Robin” was written in 1967 and was first published in Snyder’s collection of poems, The Back Country (1968). It appears in the second section, “Far East,” which includes poems written or set in Kyoto, Japan. It is written in free verse and does not rhyme or have a set syllable count. The poem is an elegiac meditation on the haunting presence of Robin, a girl whom the speaker had a relationship with when living in Oregon at the age of 19. The poem’s action moves throughout time, commenting on the past and the present, where the speaker is 10 years older and in Japan, spending time at the Buddhist temple, Shokoku-ji. As the speaker meditates on various encounters with Robin, some real and some fictious, he moves to a greater understanding of their true selves and the nature of love. Snyder is noted for being one of the six poets, along with Allen Ginsberg, who read at the first Beat reading at Gallery Six in San Francisco in 1955. Snyder, a scholar of Asian languages and culture, is also a practicing Buddhist, a study he began in earnest when he went to Japan in 1956.