Turtle Island (A New Directions Book)

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1975).

These Pulitzer Prize-winning poems and essays by the author of No Nature range from the lucid, lyrical, and mystical to the political. All, however, share a common vision: a rediscovery of North America and the ways by which we might become true natives of the land for the first time.

Turtle Island won Gary Snyder the Pulitzer back in 1975, and remains, to this observer, his most completely realized work. The title comes from a Native American term for the continent of North America, and Snyder wants to reclaim the organic and holistic environmental harmony that once held sway here. Still, this is poetry, not diatribe. Snyder's key virtue isn't his political or philosophical vision, but his poetic articulation of that vision. Excellent.