[7] Many of the poems in Turtle Island are political in nature, like much of Snyder's poetry of the late 1960s, albeit with a different focus than that of his earlier writings.

At the reading, Snyder asked whether these political poems could "succeed as poetry"; his friends "reportedly refused to pass judgment" on the question.

[8] Later, the poet's UC Davis colleague Jack Hicks related words from a female graduate student who took one of Snyder's classes in the late 1980s: "there are two kinds of political poetry: Suckers—rare—seduce you to the point.

[10] 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.

[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.

[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).

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.