Snyder's national reputation as a poet was established after his collection Turtle Island (1974) won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975. Axe Handles, which was Snyder's first collection of poems since Turtle Island, sold thirty thousand copies within six months of publication in 1983. For modern poetry, which does not in general create much public interest, this represented huge sales. It showed that Snyder was one of the few modern poets who was read by ordinary poetry lovers and non-specialists as well as academic critics.

"True Night" was regarded by many as the finest poem in the collection. This was the view, for example, of Robert Schultz and David Wyatt, in "Gary Snyder and the Curve of Return" (reprinted in Critical Essays on Gary Snyder). For these critics, "True Night" "beautifully captures the tension between the urge to be out and away and the need to settle and stay."

In...