There are several poems in the book Turtle Island. Most of them are about the environment, and what needs to be done to save it. This is my attempt to discover some of the themes within these poems.
Front Lines: This poem is about how America is growing so fast, and trying to build and urbanize everywhere that we can. Snyder says that we need to “draw our line” so that the urbanization will stop. We need to be on the front lines of this battle against urbanization.
“One Should Not Talk to a Skilled Hunter about What is Forbidden by the Buddha” – Hsiang-yen: In this poem, a gray fox is being skinned and cleaned. When they get to the contents of the stomach, they find a squirrel. Inside the squirrel, they find a piece of aluminum foil. The theme of this poem is that pollution might not affect everything directly, but it does affect everything on the planet in some way or another.
For the Children: This poem talks about how civilization is going up, but headed down at the same time. It’s saying that civilization is kind of peaking and headed towards a crash. However, it mentions how people say that the future will be ok for our children if they can get there. The theme is that society just assumes there will be a future no matter how badly we treat the earth.
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