From their Facebook page:

The Practice of the Wild is a film profile of the poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Gary Snyder. Snyder has been a creative force in all the major cultural changes that have created the modern world. Along with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, he was a central figure of the Beat generation. He helped bring Zen Buddhism into the America scene, was an active participant in the anti-war movement and an inspiration for the quest for human potential. All along he was a founding intellect, essayist and leader of the new environmental awareness that supports legislation and preservation without losing sight of direct wild experience — local people, animals, plants, watersheds and food sources.

This film, borrowing its name from one of Snyder’s most eloquent non-fiction books, revolves around a life-long conversation between Snyder and his fellow poet and novelist Jim Harrison. These two old friends and venerated men of American letters converse while taking a wilderness trek along the central California coast in an area that has been untouched for centuries. They debate the pros and cons of everything from Google to Zen koans. The discussions are punctuated by archival materials and commentaries from Snyder friends, observers, and intimates who take us through the ‘Beat’ years, the years of Zen study in Japan up to the present — where Snyder continues to be a powerful spokesperson for ecological sanity and bio-regionalism.

This film will be showing at the Wild Salmon Film Festival in Mission, BC. I’ll post more about the film after seeing it.

I asked Bart how he came up with this idea, after adding a chapter to Jack and one to Big Bridge. But don’t start there: start back at Excerpt 1 at Smoke Signals Literary Magazine.

Bart said:

The basic tale is told at Beer Mystic.

The concept is multifold: to spread the Beer Mystic far and wide and along the way drag the reader into areas, zines, styles of lit they may not have ever heard of so that the linear goes hypertextual like wandering off the well-beaten path to discover other sites, sights and voices…

I am hoping that this environmentally friendly way of crawling from pub to pub will lead to literary inebriation without all of the accompanying hangovers, jet lags, cultural prejudices and nausea…

This is the end of a decade-long run of the magazine. In the future I may open up a page for commenting or self-publishing dependent on moderation, but I am not sure yet. It depends on time. I have currently begun working full time with Fraser Riverkeeper in Vancouver, and also opened Moon Willow Press, which will start its publishing early next year. Spread the word for those interested in publishing non-fictional or fictional pieces relating to the environment and nature.

In Jack’s final issue, we go on journeys. We feature Francis Raven’s “A Community’s Habitat” and a compilation of excerpts of “ROCKPILE On the Road” with Michael Rothenberg, David Meltzer, and Terrie Carrión. The magazine is illustrated by a slide-gallery of art by Andrew Abbott, Jeff Crouch, Diana Magallón, Jillian Piccirilli, Johnnie Day Durand, and Valery Oisteanu.

Fiction and non-fiction works include those by Anthony Wright, Bart Plantenga (part of the Beer Mystic pub crawl), Clara Hume, Zdravka Evtimova, Michael Graves, Dr. Gerald Keaney, David Madgalene, Stephen Muret, Valery Oisteanu, Julio Peralta-Paulino, Spencer Bilodeau, Cece Chapman, Ae Reiff, and William Sands.

Poetry is by Daniel Ari, Marcia Arrieta, M Bromberg, Landon Brown, Michael Estabrook, Vernon Frazer, Tom Hibbard, Carlos Hiraldo, Thomas McDade, Rodney Nelson, rob mclennan, Sheila Murphy, Ashok Niyogi, Farida Samerkhanova, Kamiblue, Dee Sunshine, Charles D. Tarlton, and Jon Watson.

Video is by Cecelia Chapman and Donna Kuhn.

Enjoy and keep it touch! Thanks for all your support, readership, and contributions throughout the past several years!

SUNDAY, JUNE 27, 2010     2:00 — 5:00 p.m.

The Phoenix Theater, 201 Washington St., Petaluma  707-762-3565

http://www.thephoenixtheater.com/

POETS INCLUDE:  DAVID MELTZER, JUDY GRAHN,

SHARON DOUBIAGO, NEELI CHERKOVSKI.  Also:  Geri DiGiorno, Terri Carrion, Pat Nolan, Bill Vartnaw,

Katherine Hastings, Michael Rothenberg, Zack Fortune, David Madgalene and Sonoma County Poet Laureate Gwynn O’Gara

MUSIC BY ANNE CAROL and

PETALUMA’S FABULOUS HIGH CLASS!

ADMISSION: $5 — $5,000!  NO ONE TURNED AWAY

All proceeds go to The Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a non-profit 501(C)3 environmental health and justice organization tracking the impact of the BP oil spill and preventing the impact from being “swept under the rug”.   Donations are tax-deductible. Checks accepted.

Larry Keenan did some great stuff on Hopper back in the day. http://www.jackmagazine.com/keenan/keenan9.html and http://www.jackmagazine.com/keenan/keenan10.html

You can find my reviews at Jack Magazine (Zero) and Big Bridge (CYGAWA). I called him the greatest memoirist of our time, and stand by this claim even a few years later. Weisbecker writes with such brutal honesty and humor that his books are the not-able-to-put-down types. He’s one of the most interesting road documentarians of our time, extending his path to the matter of waves on the ocean. He’s been compared to Jack Kerouac, Hunter Thompson, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

According to poets.org, regarding Mysteriosos:

Included in this new collection are: a long travel poem to an Indian forest where an enraged elephant charges then recognizes an old human friend and turns back into the trees;” Double Moire” which “reads like a fulfillment of Goethe’s prophesy and Shelley’s: the whole universe seems to be in it, from smallest to most vast. It has been described (by Jerome Rothenberg) as the ultimate nature poem.