Asked in an interview how one might recognize a West Coast poem, the literary luminary and Zen master Gary Snyder, one of the greatest living poets of the region, responded: “It’s not exactly loose, but the lines don’t all line up as much as they do on the East Coast.” According to Snyder, among the defining characteristics of West Coast poetry is a quality of mindfulness and attention to the material facts of life and to our physical surroundings. In contrast to East Coast poetry, which Snyder described as “more internal and personal,” poetry produced in this part of the country tends towards a more expansive aesthetic, an “openness to the landscape.” No doubt this is partly a result of the fact that until not long ago the area figured in the American imagination as “the wild west,” and that it continues to be identified with a spirit of radical openness and newness. But just as central is the simple fact that the landscape here seems to stretch endlessly, a sprawling palette for the poet.

While eschewing a monolithic defnition of West Coast poetry, the poems in this selection all seem to share a commitment to noticing, drawing our attention to the “bay’s beautiful wrinkled skin, slate blue” (Armantrout) and to the “fog crested hills” that dot the coastal terrain (Zapal). Considered in this manner, an owl’s eyes become “two ink wells, beady” (Chen) and a “noon moon / dejects the tide” (James). In the aftermath of California’s deadly fres, we learn that those who survive “come back walking the ledge” (P. Nelson). Even more abstract reflections are rendered in concrete terms: “a recipe / for keeping death away / in shorthand” (Molotkov). West Coast poets can also be unabashedly political, like “a blunt instrument of the patriarchy / used against it” (S. Young), reminding us of “the circumstances of power and white feminism and how it simpers” (Sharma). Taken together, these poems all attest to an aesthetics of presence, a focus on the immediacy of one’s surroundings, whether physical or sociopolitical. Such a fixation on what is close and familiar runs the risk of losing sight of the bigger picture, of that which might not be readily observable. And yet the poems gathered here never evince a sense of closing in on themselves. Instead, in their hyper-focused specificity, these poems open up rather than narrow down potential avenues for exploration. Tough the lines may not always align, West Coast poetry is itself part of the ever-expanding landscape, just as concrete and real and vital as the cherished coastal bluffs.