Turtle Island by Gary Snyder is one of the best poetry books you will ever read. It was a theme poetry book long before poets did such a thing (though some did). And it was ahead of its time politically and thematically.
Gary Snyder, born in 1930 in Kings County, Washington, is something of a literary and humanitarian prodigy. He is from a farming family and worked on his parents farm as a boy. He was injured as a young child on the farm so he spent much time reading anything he could get his hands on.
Snyder would go live with his mother and sister in Portland, Oregon and he would eventually attend and graduate from Reed College. His career as a poet, essayist, and a before his time, human being concerned about the natural world and America especially was launched.
Snyder’s rise as a poet and cultural guru was steady in the 1950s and 1960s. By 1963, Snyder was one of many California writers mentioned by the Los Angeles Times as up and coming poets. Thomas Lyon, in 1968, described Snyder as a “highly interesting man, a famous figure in the underground or sub-culture identified with San Francisco, the BeatGeneration, and its present-day inheritors.”
In 1968, Robert Taylor wrote of Snyder’s book, Earth Household. Taylor’s essay focus on Snyder’s rising spirituality, his journey, and how that is the key to understanding how he embraces the natural world in his writing. Taylor compares Snyder to “Yeats,” a poet who Taylor believes thinks everything is blessed.
Snyder, according to Taylor, is a writer, “who has spent years meditating his work,” and this is how he reaches readers. Snyder, Taylor writes, might be the key to understanding the next evolutionary cycle for humans, that which lies beyond the mind.
In 1974, finally came Turtle Island. It was his eighth book (Snyder has published over 30 books). It was destined to be a great book because all of Snyder is here. His spirituality, his subtle political angst, his deep connection to the natural world, his willingness to explore the worlds outside of U.S. culture and history.
Turtle Island is the name of North America according to the Indigenous populations. It is a term still used today. A friend of mine, Matthew Fletcher, a legal scholar on Indigenous studies, has a blog called “Turtle Talk.” It is a play off of the term, Turtle Island.
Turtle Island, Snyder’s fabulous collection, is simply a masterwork. It a work of art that finds a rising star hitting his stride, after years of study, work, and life. People had already recognized Snyder by this point so it is no surprise that he wins the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for the book.
The book is split into four sections.
The poetry sections are “Manzanita,” “Magpie’s Song,” “For the Children,” and finally, Plain Talk, which includes “Four Changes.” “Four Changes” is like an appendix. That section is not poetry but adds to the discussion Snyder begins in the poetry. It is here where Snyder is hinting to the future, climate change, ecological challenges, and the survival of the human race. It is one of those innovative additions that fuels the power of the book.
Snyder is celebrating the natural world in “Turtle Island” and it once was. He is also speaking about humanity itself as being part of that world instead of having dominion over that world. Turtle Island is like a history, a meditative history, that feels new and fresh each time you read it. It is understood but on a certain level, it is always evolving, because earth is always growing and evolving.
Turtle Island is the kind of book that combines traditional poetry styles with new styles of poetry but it also incorporates themes of literature lost over time. Wendell Berry comes to mind when you read this book as well as Rachel Carson. But, Snyder’s rhythmic flow is musical, that of where he started with the Beat poets. He can be minimalist as well as improvisational on the page and he is adept at all of it.
Some of the best work here is “I Went Into Maverick Bar,” “Anasazi,” “O Waters,” and “Ethnobotany.” It is a book that is an easy read because the themes don’t sway far from each other in the work. Snyder is a humanist, and also rooted in Eastern ideas and spiritual practices.
His country, America, is kind of the antithesis of what he believes. But, Snyder, through a grand collection of poems, is not prepared to accept that there isn’t a larger truth to our lives that we will one day discover again.
Check out additional resources on Snyder and Turtle Island below:
https://www.kerouac.com/shop/books/turtle-island-by-gary-snyder/
https://citylights.com/beat-literature-poetry-history/turtle-island-w-4-changes/
Thank you for this. I haven’t read Turtle Island. Very excited to now.