''Turtle Island'' is a book of poems and essays written by
Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder (born May 8, 1930) is an American poet, essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. His early poetry has been associated with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance and he has been described as the "poet laureate of ...
and published by
New Directions in 1974. Within it, Snyder expresses his vision for humans to live in harmony with the earth and all its creatures. The book was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually for Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first presented in 1922, and is given for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author, published ...
in
1975
It was also declared the ''International Women's Year'' by the United Nations and the European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe.
Events
January
* January 1 - Watergate scandal (United States): John N. Mitchell, H. R. ...
. "
Turtle Island" is a name for the continent of
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
used by many Native American tribes.
Background
By the late 1950s, Gary Snyder had established himself as one of the major American poets of his generation. He was associated with both the
Beat Generation
The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generatio ...
and the regional
San Francisco Renaissance
The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco, which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetry avant-garde in the 1950s. However, others (e.g., Alan Watt ...
. He spent much of the 1960s traveling between California and Japan, where he studied
Zen
Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...
. In 1966, he met Masa Uehara while in Osaka. They married the following year and had their first child, Kai, in April 1968; by December, Snyder and his new family moved to California. His return coincided with the highest crest of
1960s counterculture, as well as the nascent
environmental movement
The environmental movement (sometimes referred to as the ecology movement), also including conservation and green politics, is a diverse philosophical, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists a ...
. He was received as an
elder statesman
A statesman or stateswoman typically is a politician who has had a long and respected political career at the national or international level.
Statesman or Statesmen may also refer to:
Newspapers United States
* ''The Statesman'' (Oregon), a n ...
by both the
hippie
A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...
s and the
environmentalist
An environmentalist is a person who is concerned with and/or advocates for the protection of the environment. An environmentalist can be considered a supporter of the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that se ...
s, and he became a
public intellectual
An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for the normative problems of society. Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator or a ...
who gave public lectures, making television appearances, and publishing new writing.
Many of the poems and essays in the book had been previously published. The essay "Four Changes" first appeared in ''The Environmental Handbook'', a collection published by
David Brower
David Ross Brower (; July 1, 1912 – November 5, 2000) was a prominent environmentalist and the founder of many environmental organizations, including the John Muir Institute for Environmental Studies (1997), Friends of the Earth (1969), Eart ...
and
Friends of the Earth
Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) is an international network of environmental organizations in 73 countries. The organization was founded in 1969 in San Francisco by David Brower, Donald Aitken and Gary Soucie after Brower's split with ...
for the first
Earth Day
Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EarthDay.org (formerly Earth Day Network) including 1 b ...
in 1970. "Four Changes" was initially published anonymously with no copyright notice, and consequently it was widely reproduced. One of the poems, "The Hudsonian Curlew", was first published in the November 1969 issue of ''
Poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
'' magazine. Some of the poems were published in 1972 as a limited-edition collection titled ''Manzanita''.
Like Snyder's poetry of the late 1960s, many of the poems found in ''Turtle Island'' are political in nature. However, with American military involvement in the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
coming to a close, Snyder's attention had turned from matters of war and peace to environmental and ecological concerns. In 1973 several of Snyder's friends, interested in his new direction, gathered in
Berkeley, California
Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...
to hear him read his new work. At the reading, Snyder asked whether these political poems could "succeed as poetry"; his friends "reportedly refused to pass judgment" on the question. Later, the poet's UC Davis colleague Jack Hicks related words from a female graduate student who took one of Snyder's classes in the late 1980s: "there are two kinds of political poetry: ''Suckers''—rare—seduce you to the point. ''Whackers'' assault you with the message.... I cited ''Turtle Island'' as a blatant whacker, and Gary defended it strongly. But first he listened."
Contents
''Turtle Island'' is split into four sections. The first three—''Manzanita'', ''Magpie's Song'', and ''For the Children''—include a total of almost 60 poems, while the fourth section, ''Plain Talk'', includes five prose essays. The collection includes many of Snyder's most commonly quoted and anthologized poems. There is also an introduction, in which Snyder explains the significance of the book's title.
Reception
For ''
Poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
'' magazine, the critic
Richard Howard
Richard Joseph Howard (October 13, 1929 – March 31, 2022; adopted as Richard Joseph Orwitz) was an American poet, literary critic, essayist, teacher, and translator. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and was a graduate of Columbia University, w ...
reviewed ''Turtle Island'' alongside new collections by
Marvin Bell
Marvin Hartley Bell (August 3, 1937 – December 14, 2020) was an American poet and teacher who was the first Poet Laureate of the state of Iowa.
Biography
Bell was raised in Center Moriches, Long Island. He served in the U.S. Army from 196 ...
and
David Wagoner
David Russell Wagoner (June 5, 1926 – December 18, 2021) was an American poet, novelist, and educator.
Biography
David Russell Wagoner was born on June 5, 1926, in Massillon, Ohio. Raised in Whiting, Indiana, from the age of seven, Wagoner at ...
. According to Howard, the book describes "where we are and where he wants us to be," although the difference between those two is "so vast that the largely good-humored resonance of the poems attests to Snyder's forbearance, his enforced detachment." He praised the book's poems for their meditative quality and their lack of preachiness or invective. He described the poems as "transitory, elliptical, extraterritorial" works, in which "the world becomes largely a matter of contours and traces to be guessed at, marveled over, left alone."
In ''
Library Journal
''Library Journal'' is an American trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey. It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional prac ...
'', James McKenzie wrote:
Writing for ''
the Christian Science Monitor
''The Christian Science Monitor'' (''CSM''), commonly known as ''The Monitor'', is a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles in electronic format as well as a weekly print edition. It was founded in 1908 as a daily newspaper ...
'', Victor Howes praised the book's "gentle, uncomplicated love-lyrics to planet earth" and said it would be equally appealing to poetry readers and to conservationists. Herbert Leibowitz, writing for ''
the New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
'', was less enthusiastic. While Leibowitz found merit in a select few poems and praised Snyder's prose as "vigorous and persuasive", he found the collection "flat, humorless ... uneventful ...
ndoddly egotistical". In his view, it was "a textbook example of the limits of Imagism." Still, the critic said he was "reluctant to mention these doubts" because he found Snyder's fundamental environmentalist message to be so laudatory, even "on the side of the gods."
The first American edition was limited to 2,000 copies. As of 2005, the book had been reprinted roughly once a year in the United States, placing it among a handful of Snyder's books that have never gone
out-of-print
__NOTOC__
An out-of-print (OOP) or out-of-commerce item or work is something that is no longer being published. The term applies to all types of printed matter, visual media, sound recordings, and video recordings. An out-of-print book is a book ...
. It has sold more than 100,000 copies. The book has been translated into Swedish (by Reidar Ekner in 1974), French (by Brice Matthieussent in 1977), Japanese (by
Nanao Sakaki
Nanao may refer to:
Places
*, Japan
**Nanao Line a rail line through Nanao, Ishikawa
** Nanao Station a station on the Nanao Line
*Nan'ao County (), Shantou, Guangdong
** Nan'ao Island (), forming most of Nan'ao County
*Nan'ao Subdistrict (), a ...
in 1978), and German (by Ronald Steckel in 1980).
Pulitzer Prize
Snyder received the
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually for Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first presented in 1922, and is given for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author, published ...
for ''Turtle Island'' in May 1975. Because of Snyder's remoteness at Kitkitdizze, news of the award took some time to reach him. It was the first time a Pulitzer had been given to a poet from the
West Coast West Coast or west coast may refer to:
Geography Australia
* Western Australia
*Regions of South Australia#Weather forecasting, West Coast of South Australia
* West Coast, Tasmania
**West Coast Range, mountain range in the region
Canada
* Britis ...
. The prestigious award helped to legitimize Snyder's idiosyncratic worldview in the intellectual mainstream.
Along with the award itself, Snyder received a check for $1,000 (). According to his friend
Steve Sanfield, Snyder quietly donated the money to a local volunteer organization that was building a new school in the San Juan Ridge area. The volunteers told Snyder that they would probably spend the money on beer, Sanfield said, and "though none of us knew where those beers came from at the time, they sure did taste good." Snyder maintained that the best perk of winning the Pulitzer Prize was that people no longer introduced him as "a Beat poet".
[; .]
Citations
References
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External links
''Turtle Island''at the
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
; a digital copy of the book can be borrowed for 14 days with registration
*
Several poems from ''Turtle Island'' have been published online by the
Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation is an American literary society that seeks to promote poetry and lyricism in the wider culture. It was formed from ''Poetry'' magazine, which it continues to publish, with a 2003 gift of $200 million from philanthropist Ru ...
:
*
The Bath
*
The Hudsonian Curlew
*
I Went into the Maverick Bar
{{DEFAULTSORT:Turtle Island
1974 poetry books
1974 non-fiction books
1974 in the environment
American poetry collections
American essay collections
Books about California
Books about environmentalism
Books about North America
Deep ecology
Ecology books
English-language books
Environmental non-fiction books
Essays about poetry
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry-winning works
Simple living
New Directions Publishing books