In his review of Turtle Island in Poetry magazine, critic Richard Howard[11] commented that the book describes "where we are and where he wants us to be," although the difference between those two is "so vast that the largely good-humored resonance of the poems attests to Snyder's forbearance, his enforced detachment."[12] He praised the book's poems for their meditative quality and their lack of preachiness or invective.[13] He described the poems as "transitory, elliptical, extraterritorial" works, in which "the world becomes largely a matter of contours and traces to be guessed at, marveled over, left alone."[14]
In Library Journal, James McKenzie wrote:
In precise, disciplined, unromantic language and form (at its best resembling Pound's), Snyder's poems pare cleanly through the thick crust of late 20th-Century urban mass life, revealing its essentially incidental nature, connecting us with the creeks, mountains, birds, and bears of "North America" that were here long before it had that name and, nature prevailing, will be here after that name is lost, forgotten, destroyed.[15]
Writing for the Christian Science Monitor, Victor Howes praised the book's "gentle, uncomplicated love-lyrics to planet earth" and said it would be equally appealing to poetry readers and to conservationists.[16] Herbert Leibowitz, writing for the New York Times Book Review, was less enthusiastic. While Leibowitz found merit in a select few poems and praised Snyder's prose as "vigorous and persuasive", he found the collection "flat, humorless ... uneventful ... [and] oddly egotistical".[17] In his view, it was "a textbook example of the limits of Imagism."[17] Still, the critic said he was "reluctant to mention these doubts" because he found Snyder's fundamental environmentalist message to be so laudatory, even "on the side of the gods."[17]
The printing of the first American edition was limited to 2,000 copies.[18] As of 2005, the book had been reprinted roughly once a year in the United States, placing it among a handful of Snyder's books that have never gone out-of-print.[19] It has sold more than 100,000 copies.[20] The book has been translated into Swedish (by Reidar Ekner in 1974), French (by Brice Matthieussent in 1977), Japanese (by Nanao Sakaki in 1978), and German (by Ronald Steckel in 1980).[21]
Pulitzer Prize
Snyder received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Turtle Island in May 1975.[22] Because of Snyder's remoteness at Kitkitdizze, news of the award took some time to reach him.[7] It was the first time a Pulitzer had been given to a poet from the West Coast.[23] The prestigious award helped to legitimize Snyder's idiosyncratic worldview in the intellectual mainstream.[24]
Along with the award itself, Snyder received a check for $1,000 (equivalent to $5,662 in 2023). According to his friend Steve Sanfield, Snyder quietly donated the money to a local volunteer organization that was building a new school in the San Juan Ridge area.[25] Snyder maintained that the best perk of winning the Pulitzer Prize was that people no longer introduced him as "a Beat poet".[26]
