This collection is made up of four sections: Far West--poems of the
Western mountain country where, as a young man. Gary Snyder worked as a
logger and forest ranger; Far East--poems written between 1956 and 1964
in Japan where he studied Zen at the monastery in Kyoto; Kali--poems
inspired by a visit to India and his reading of Indian religious texts,
particularly those of Shivaism and Tibetan Buddhism; and Back--poems
done on his return to this country in 1964 which look again at our West
with the eyes of India and Japan. The book concludes with a group of
translations of the Japanese poet Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933), with whose
work Snyder feels a close affinity. The title, The Back Country, has
three major associations; wilderness. the backward countries, and the
"back country of the mind with its levels of being in the unconscious.