These Pulitzer Prize-winning poems and essays by the author of No Nature range from the lucid, lyrical, and mystical to the political. All, however, share a common vision: a rediscovery of North America and the ways by which we might become true natives of the land for the first time.

Both Pound and Williams have shown how a good poet can revitalize prose style. Earth House Hold (a play on the root meanings of "ecology"), drawn from Gary Snyder's essays and journals, may prove a landmark for the new generation. "As a poet," Snyder tells us, "I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the late Paleolithic; the fertility of terrifying initiation and rebirth; the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the...