What You Should Know to Be a Poet

Snyder swings back and forth from different concepts of religion and then uses aggressive language to explain different aspects of poetry along the same lines. I believe that Snyder is trying to use language creatively in order to suggest the level of comfort that should be portrayed when a poet creates a poem. In addition, Snyder uses intense language and then moves his poem into a less vulgar side and to more positive, this illustrates that he is suggesting the different forms of extremes the boundaries of writing a poem as well. For instance, 'kiss the ass of the devil and eat shit' and after two lines he shifts to ' then love the human: wives husbands and friends'.
Snyder uses form in a very different way. For instance, the words 'wives', 'husband', and 'friends' are in the same form as ' real danger', gambles', and ' edge of death, which suggests that he is putting two worlds in front of the reader, and the spaces between those words indicate that he is calling attention to those aspects of life as a whole.