"It's the birthday of Gary Snyder, born in San Francisco (1930). He started out as one of the Beat writers of the 1950s. In 1956 he left the San Francisco Beat scene and went to Japan. He spent most of the next twelve years in a monastery, studying Buddhism.

Gary Snyder said, 'As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the Neolithic: the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe.' "

from Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac" on NPR