And the Lilly Goes to...

Stephen Hershey

American poet and ecologist Gary Snyder, often associated with the Beat Generation, has recently won the 2008 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. In announcing the winner of this $100,000 lifetime achievment award, Poetry magazine editor Christian Wiman said: “Gary Snyder is in essence a contemporary devotional poet, though he is not devoted to any one god or way of being so much as to Being itself. His poetry is a testament to the sacredness of the natural world and our relation to it, and a prophecy of what we stand to lose if we forget that relation.” Common to most Beats, Snyder developed an early interest in Zen Buddhism and a significant awareness of nature and indigenous cultures. His writings include Myths and Text (1960), The Back Country (1967), Turtle Island (1975 Pulitzer Prize), Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996), and Back On The Fire: Essays (2007).