Themes from Turtle Island Part: 1

My selection of poems from Turtle Island includes 4 poems from the middle of the book that looked appealing. However, I did find some interesting results.

The first poem I came across is titled Steak. This poem describes one of many steak house restaurants that we have in America today. Snyder goes on to describe the people eating there as well as the cow’s location themselves on the farm. One theme I noticed in this poem is the savagery of humans and their meat. The purpose of these houses is to cut up cows and serve them as food to humans. And, as Snyder shows, we do it in the most inhumane way possible.

The next poem I read was Front Lines. This poem is telling the tale of a piece of wooded land that gets cleared out for a realty company. One theme in this poem is the aggressive expansion of Americans. With no regard for nature, we use bulldozers “grinding and slobbering/sideslipping and belching on top of/the skinned-up bodies of still live bushes” only “in the pay of a man/from town”.

Another poem I found was The Great Mother. Although this poem is only 5 lines, there is a major theme included in it. This theme is that human’s awareness need to increase. Every day we should think about the decisions we made and how they affect the environment.

The last poem I read was For Nothing. The theme this poem offers is that humans don’t appreciate the beauty of nature. The poem talks about “earthing a flower” but no one is there to appreciate it, so it ends up growing for vain.

I enjoyed the readings from Turtle Island and the challenges they produced. These poems all have similar themes and echo the thought of living with nature, not using it.