Eco-Libris, a company dedicated to positive environmental practices in the book publishing business, is currently sponsoring a Green Books Campaign, a blogger event designed to call attention to green publishing in which 100 blogs will simultaneously review 100 green-published books.

1. If you grew up ordering slim paperbacks in school from Scholastic Book Services, you'll enjoy this Flickr set as much as I do (via).

1. Mike Huckabee has written a book called Do The Right Thing? That's not Do The Right Thing. This is Do The Right Thing:

1. I don't usually pay attention to "Earth Day" any more than to "National Poetry Month", but that doesn't mean I can't call attention to an impressive book that's hitting the stores on this day, Tuesday, April 22.

Eco-Libris is a company created to help the book publishing industry adopt more environmentally aware practices. Activities include tree plantings in collaboration with organizations like RIPPLE Africa in countries like Malawi (shown in photo). I recently got a chance to ask the company's CEO, Raz Godelnik, a few questions.

-- The Guardian has an interview with Gary Snyder about environmental and social responsibility that is absolutely worth reading, especially if you love Gary Snyder like I love Gary Snyder (though I don't think this is a requirement).

Near the beginning of Gary Snyder's new book, the poet asks, "Who wouldn't take the chance to climb a snowpeak and get the long view?" While the question is part of a piece about climbing Mt. St. Helens, it can be read as an invitation as well -- who wouldn't take the chance to follow him into Danger on Peaks and see the view? The long view -- mountains and loved ones (past and present) and the land -- offers glimpses of "beings living or not, beings or not,/ inside or outside of time", and is one well worth beholding.

Language as a Tool for Solving the Global Crisis

"Hakuin Zenji puts it 'self nature that is no nature/ . . . far beyond mere doctrine.' An open space to move in, with the whole body, the whole mind. My gesture has been with language." --Gary Snyder, Preface to No Nature.

"Our suicidal poets (Plath, Berryman, Lowell, Jarrell, et al.) spent too much of their lives inside rooms and classrooms when they should have been trudging up mountains, slogging through swamps, rowing down rivers. The indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial."

This is the kind of quote which typifies Edward Abbey. It will make some people laugh out loud, and others shake their heads. The greatest thing about Abbey was that he really wouldn't have given a damn whether you liked it or not.