I Went into the Maverick Bar

By Gary Snyder b. 1930 Gary Snyder

I went into the Maverick Bar

In Farmington, New Mexico.

And drank double shots of bourbon

backed with beer.

My long hair was tucked up under a cap

I’d left the earring in the car.

Two cowboys did horseplay

by the pool tables,

A waitress asked us

where are you from?

a country-and-western band began to play

“We don’t smoke Marijuana in Muskokie”

And with the next song,

a couple began to dance.

They held each other like in High School dances

in the fifties;

I recalled when I worked in the woods

and the bars of Madras, Oregon.

That short-haired joy and roughness—

America—your stupidity.

I could almost love you again.

We left—onto the freeway shoulders—

under the tough old stars—

In the shadow of bluffs

I came back to myself,

To the real work, to

“What is to be done.”

Source: No Nature: New and Selected Poems (1992)

Biography

Gary Snyder began his career in the 1950s as a noted member of the “Beat Generation,” though he has since explored a wide range of social and spiritual matters in both poetry and prose. Snyder’s work blends physical reality and precise observations of nature with inner insight received primarily through the practice of Zen Buddhism. While Snyder has gained attention as a spokesman for the preservation of the natural world and . . .

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