SOURCE: "Of Wildness and Wilderness in Plain Language: The Practice of the Wild," in Understanding Gary Snyder, University of South Carolina Press, 1992, pp. 154-66.

In the following excerpt, Murphy discusses the ecological impact of Snyder's writing.

Since the publication of Axe Handles Snyder has continued to address the central problem of civilization but in a more diversified way. He has written poetry, given poetry readings, written prose, and begun teaching as a permanent member of a university faculty. His latest published volume is a work qualitatively superior and more significant than any other prose volume he has published. The Practice of the Wild is a sophisticated yet clear, complex yet uncomplicated, unified book about knowing how to be in this world. In one of the early reviews of this book, Ray Olson claims that Snyder's essays "constitute the finest wisdom (and also ecological) literature of our time" [Booklist...