Passage Through India

In the early 1960s, the Beat poet Gary Snyder was studying Buddhism in Japan with just one published book of poetry (Myths & Texts) to his credit. During the winter of 1962 he and fellow poet Joanne Kyger set forth with their “backpacks and stout shoes, from Mura­sakino in Kyoto, to travel by French ship, bottom third class to Ceylon,” at a time when backpacking trips through southeast Asia were very much a countercultural rite of passage. Both he and Kyger kept journals and both accounts were later published: Snyder’s appeared first in Caterpillar magazine in 1972, and in book form in 1983; Kyger’s version of events is still in print as Strange Big Moon. This “expanded and illustrated” edition of Snyder’s Passage Through India (Shoemaker & Hoard) shows how the 1960s bohemian experience can be successfully repackaged as coffee-table fare for those who may once have dreamed of dabbling as bohemians themselves.