In this Lion’s Roar archive article, Rick Bass looks at Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day,” which asks, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Pointing Beyond Words
Newly translated works by the renowned Korean poet Ko Un offer powerful glimpses into the human condition and the paradoxes of the Buddhist path.
National Treasure: Gary Snyder
Beat hero, steward of the earth, Zen Buddhist, and poet Gary Snyder turns 90 on May 8. He looks back on an honorable life at the leading edge.
Searching for Spring: Pat Enkyo O’Hara on a Poem by a Sung Dynasty Nun
Pat Enkyo O’Hara on an Anonymous Poem by a Sung Dynasty Nun.
Zen Buddhist poet and novelist Ocean Vuong awarded MacArthur “Genius Grant”
The Vietnamese-American Zen Buddhist poet and novelist Ocean Vuong has been named one of the 2019 fellows of the MacArthur Foundation.
Smokey the Bear Sutra
In 1969, poet Gary Snyder wrote his “Smokey the Bear Sutra,” imagining Smokey as the Great Sun Buddha giving a discourse, in the style of a Buddhist sutra. Fifty years later, the message of the sutra continues to resonate.
Maryland’s Poet Laureate on How Poetry Slows You Down
“People find out who they are by writing,” says Maryland poet laureate Grace Cavalieri. At 86, Cavalieri tells Hal Atwood, she’s still writing.
Who Was Otagaki Rengetsu?
Grace Schireson on the life, art, and poetics of the Zen nun Otagaki Rengetsu, a woman “humbled by life’s blows as well as its beauty.”
W.S. Merwin, US Poet Laureate and Zen Buddhist, dies at 91
W.S. Merwin, the American poet, environmental activist, and two-time Pulitzer Prize recipient, died Friday March 15 at his home in Haiku, Hawaii, on the island of Maui. He was 91.
The Oral Tradition of W.S. Merwin
The poet W.S. Merwin died on March 15, age 91. In this essay, published in Lion’s Roar magazine in 2011, Susan Dunlap contemplates Merwin’s poem “Vixen.”