Response to Gary Snyder's Turtle Island (3)

Gary Snyder's writings put significant emphasis on nature, including the air, water, and ground.  Each poem speaks specifically about one more so than the other, creating valid points behind each.  In the poem, For the Children, Snyder speaks of the coming age, focusing on the importance of learning the land and its functions in order to make it through the century.  His goal here is to fulfill a sense of peace.  His words stay together at the end of the poem stand out; they support Snyder's idea of creating change, starting with a single individual and working towards change from a whole population.  The poem, It Pleases, states that "It does what it pleases" in reference to the world.  To me, this contradicts what Gary Snyder talks about in the rest of his poems because his ideas support the fact that humans must be the ones to implement action in order to produce change.  Snyder's reasoning behind implementing this idea is to make us learn to respect the land and appreciate it more by learning about it.