Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Gary Snyder’s "Covers the Ground" contrasts the wild, flowering Central Valley of California as once described by John Muir with the industrialized, mechanized sprawl of modern agriculture, infrastructure, and human habitation. The poem’s structure is a steady accumulation of images, reflecting how the land has been layered over with human-made structures and systems, a transformation that Snyder presents with a mix of observation, lament, and irony.

The poem opens with a quote from John Muir, "When California was wild, it was one sweet bee-garden…"—a nostalgic invocation of the past, where the Central Valley was a vast, continuous bloom of wildflowers. The contrast with the present is immediate, as Snyder describes the valley’s current state through sharp, clipped descriptions: "blossoming almond orchard acres / lines of tree-trunks shoot a glance through / as the rows flash by—". The rapid succession of images mirrors the view from a car window, the landscape blurring into a sequence of regimented, cultivated trees, no longer a wilderness but an agricultural machine.

Snyder then catalogues the elements that now "cover the ground": "cement culverts standing on end, / house-high & six feet wide / culvert after culvert far as you can see". These massive concrete drainage structures, juxtaposed with mobile homes and freeway overpasses, indicate a landscape increasingly dominated by infrastructure. The natural beauty Muir once praised is buried beneath industry, transportation, and standardized housing. The poet’s tone is not explicitly mournful, but the sheer weight of these artificial elements suggests a loss.

The landscape is further dissected into zones of production: "yards of tractors, combines lined up— / new bright-painted units down at one end, / old stuff broke and smashed down at the other,". Here, Snyder captures the continuous cycle of agricultural labor, machinery constantly renewed and discarded. The same logic of replacement applies to human structures: "identical red-roofed houses closed-in fencing," emphasizing uniformity, enclosure, and repetition, in stark contrast to Muir’s vision of open land filled with diverse, interwoven plant life.

Despite the human reshaping of the land, traces of nature remain: "crows whuff over almond blossoms / beehives sit tight between fruit tree ranks / eucalyptus boughs shimmer in the wind—". Yet even these elements feel subsumed within human control—beehives strategically placed, trees planted in orderly ranks. The agricultural industry relies on nature, but on tightly managed terms.

The final shift in the poem recalls Muir’s description of the Central Valley in its original state: "The Great Central Plain of California / was one smooth bed of honey-bloom / 400 miles, your foot would press / a hundred flowers at every step / it seemed one sheet of plant gold;". The lyrical beauty of this passage contrasts sharply with the industrialized world Snyder has just described. The names of wildflowers—"bahia, madia, madaria, burielia, / chrysopsis, grindelia"—become an elegy, a roll call of lost species, their presence now ghostly, replaced by asphalt and irrigation.

Snyder’s closing line—"us and our stuff just covering the ground."—delivers the poem’s final statement with dry irony. The modern world, with its roads, machinery, and endless structures, has buried the living ecosystem that once defined the valley. The phrasing reduces human impact to "stuff", suggesting both the banality and the overwhelming scale of development. It is a simple, unsentimental conclusion that leaves the reader contemplating the cost of progress.

"Covers the Ground" is both a meditation and an indictment, not through explicit condemnation but through juxtaposition. By presenting the industrial present against the natural past, Snyder allows the reader to feel the weight of transformation. His poetic method—cataloging, listing, layering images—mirrors the process of accumulation that has reshaped the landscape. The poem does not argue for a return to the past, but it does insist on remembering what has been lost. In doing so, it challenges the reader to question what it means to live on and with the land, and whether human expansion must always come at the cost of the wild beauty that once covered the ground.

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