Why I Take Good Care of My Macintosh
by Gary Snyder- Because it buzzes while printing like a planer in a woodshop
- Because it jumps like a skittish horse
- and sometimes throws me
- Because it is pokey when cold
- Because plastic is a sad, strong material
- that is charming to rodents
- Because it is flighty
- Because my mind flies into it through my fingers
- Because it leaps forward and backward
- Because my mind flies into it through my fingers
- is an endless sniffer and searcher, is my faithful hound
- Because its keys click like hail on a rock
- & it winks when it goes out,
- & puts word-heaps in hoards for me, dozens of pockets of
- & it winks when it goes out,
- gold under boulders in streambeds, identical seedpods
- strong on a vine, or it stores bins of bolts;
- And I lose them and find them,
- Because whole worlds of writing can be boldly layed out
- and then highlighted, & vanished in a flash at
- Because whole worlds of writing can be boldly layed out
- "delete" so it teaches
- of impermanence and pain;
- Because my wife likes it,
- & because my computer and me are both brief
- in this world, both foolish, and we have earthly fates,
- Because I have let it move in with me
- right inside the tent
- And it goes with me out every morning
- We fill up our baskets, get back home,
- Feel rich, relax, I throw it a scrap and it hums.
- We fill up our baskets, get back home,
This poem was originally submitted to the Turn-Around Times, the predecessor of the IT Times, and printed in March of 1988. At the time, Gary Snyder reported that he had a Macintosh Plus with a 20 Mb hard disk. Today, Snyder uses a Mac Powerbook 1400cs, with 750 Mb. We reprint this poem with his permission.Gary Snyder joined the faculty at UC Davis in the spring of 1986. Last year Snyder was awarded Yale University's Bollingen Prize in Poetry. Prior recipients include Robert Frost, Robert Penn Warren, and Wallace Stevens. Snyder is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for his collection of poems entitled Turtle Island [New Directions Press: 1974].