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This book was Snyder's first collection of poetry after Turtle Island, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1974. The poems in Axe Handles reveal the roots of community in the family, and also explore the transmission of cultural values and knowledge. Above all, these are poems about language--that is, language as the preeminent manifestation of culture. In the title poem, we read: "I am an axe / And my son a handle, soon / To be shaping again, model / And tool, craft of culture, / How we go on."