Gary Snyder's Turtle Island

The poem seen here, reprinted as a beautifully illustrated broadside (or poster) in 1978, is part of a body of poetic work published together in Snyder’s book, Turtle Island. The author’s introductory note in the book provides an explanation of the book’s title and context for the poems:

“Turtle Island—the old/new name for the continent, based on many creation myths of the people who have been living here for millennia… A name: that we may see ourselves more accurately on this continent of watersheds and life-communities—plant zones, physiographic provinces, culture areas; following natural boundaries. The ‘U.S.A.’ and its states and counties are arbitrary and inaccurate impositions on what is really here.”

Best known as a poet (his early work has been associated with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance), Snyder is also an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. He has been described as the "poet laureate of Deep Ecology.” Snyder was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1975 for Turtle Island.

This body of poetic work from the early 1970s has only grown more timely and relevant to the issues we face today. In his introductory note in Turtle Island, Snyder goes on to describe the theme that unites the poems:

“The poems speak of place, and the energy-pathways that sustain life. Each living being is a swirl in the flow, a formal turbulence, a ‘song.’ The land, the planet itself, is also a living being—at another pace. Anglos, Black people, Chicanos, and others beached up on these shores all share such views at the deepest levels of their old cultural traditions—African, Asian, or European. Hark again to those roots, to see our ancient solidarity, and then to the work of being together on Turtle Island.”

Special Collections and Archives holds some of Snyder’s personal papers along with an extensive collection of his published works.