Poetry for Students

288 Poetry for Students

All,” the last poem in Axe Handles, makes this

abundantly clear. The poem restates the Pledge of

Allegiance in a way that redefines the meaning of

patriotism, and lays out an environmentalist view

of what unity means in its fullest sense:

I pledge allegiance to the soil

of Turtle Island,

and to the beings who thereon dwell

one ecosystem

in diversity

under the sun

With joyful interpenetration for all.

Critical Overview

Snyder’s national reputation as a poet was estab-

lished after his collection Turtle Island(1974) won

the Pulitzer Prize in 1975. Axe Handles, which was

Snyder’s first collection of poems since Turtle Is-

land, sold thirty thousand copies within six months

of publication in 1983. For modern poetry, which

does not in general create much public interest, this

represented huge sales. It showed that Snyder was

one of the few modern poets who was read by or-

dinary poetry lovers and non-specialists as well as

academic critics.

“True Night” was regarded by many as the

finest poem in the collection. This was the view,

for example, of Robert Schultz and David Wyatt,

in “Gary Snyder and the Curve of Return”

(reprinted in Critical Essays on Gary Snyder). For

these critics, “True Night” “beautifully captures the

tension between the urge to be out and away and

the need to settle and stay.”

In Understanding Gary Snyder, Patrick D.

Murphy interpreted the meaning of the poem as fol-

lows: “To remain in the dark too long, to be car-

ried away permanently into the wilderness of the

land and his own mind, would be to renege on the

True Night

Compare

&

Contrast

• 1980s:Zen Buddhism has a hundred-year his-
  tory in the United States. There are many Zen
  centers in cities throughout the nation. Many
  people are attracted to Zen through the work of
  Snyder, who first became interested in Zen in
  the 1950s.
  Today:Zen Buddhism and other branches of
  Buddhism continue to grow steadily in the
  United States. The branch that has recently at-
  tracted most attention is Tibetan Buddhism.
  Much of this has been due to the popularity of
  the Dalai Lama and the publicity given to the
  cause of Tibet in its conflict with China by Hol-
  lywood personalities like Richard Gere, Martin
  Scorsese, and Steven Seagal.


• 1980s:InAxe Handles, Snyder continues to ad-
  vocate responsibility to a sense of community
  and shared culture. He admires cultures that con-
  sist of small, self-governing communities.
  Today:AsBowling Alone: The Collapse and
  Revival of American Community (2000), by

Robert Putnam, demonstrates, Americans are

becoming more and more isolated and disen-

gaged from civic life. This is indicated by mea-

sures including how many times the average

American votes, volunteers, goes to church, at-

tends a club or union meeting, signs a commu-

nity petition, or chats with a stranger.

• 1980s:After a series of legislative successes in
  the 1970s that established regulations governing
  clean air and water, the environmentalist move-
  ment is on the defensive. The Reagan adminis-
  tration tends to favor business interests over
  environmental concerns.
  Today:The environmentalist movement is in a
  crisis. The Bush administration pursues a pro-
  business agenda and makes substantial efforts to
  ease environmental regulations. In 2001, the
  Bush energy plan emphasizes oil exploration and
  construction of coal and nuclear power plants.
  Energy conservation and the development of re-
  newable energy receive little attention.

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