Anasazi (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

Gary Snyder’s first few books of poetry were reviewed by only a handful of critics, but all of them wrote very favorably of the poet’s work. Most comments centered on Snyder’s easy lyrical style and precise portrayal of the natural world, some noting that he was simply writing the life he was living. After this positive beginning, Snyder moved to Japan and little was heard from him back in the States. When he returned and began construction on his home in the Sierra Nevadas, he wrote the poems for Turtle Island.

This book was not received favorably by many critics at first. It was considered too limited in scope, most of the poems drawing on the poet’s own regional environment and on his own friends and experiences. In his “‘Thirty Miles of Dust: There Is No Other Life, ’” Scott McLean states that, “scholars lamented his departure — from the purely imagistic lyric for forms that were too overtly political or were too centered on one locality.” Later, however, critics came to regard the book as one of Snyder’s best, and it was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1975. McLean attributes this change in critical attitude to readers developing a better understanding of the importance that social issues and community involvement held for the poet. McLean points out that “these poems represented for Gary a series of notes in an open scale, a range of poetry that community life and involvement demanded. For when the developers are right there at a neighbor’s property line it is important to have a poem that ends, ‘And here we must draw/ Our line.’” (This line appears in the poem “Front Lines.”)