A Poet of Beginnings, Endings, and In Between
“In a strange kind of sense writing frees me to believe in myself, to be able to speak, to have voice, because I have to; it is my survival”
Joy Harjo
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a member of the Mvskoke(Mucogee /Creek) Nation, Joy Harjo’s three terms as the United States’ Poet Laureate just ended this year. Only one other poet, Robert Pinsky has been appointed for three terms. Harjo, who has won a long list of awards based on her work, not only as a poet, but also for her participation in feminist and social justice. Her poetry draws from Indigenous myths, symbols, and tribal values. The Earth’s own Nations express the urgency of remembrance and the path of transcendence. Her work presents many actual landscapes, especially the U.S. Southwest and Southeast. She once commented, “I feel strongly that I have a responsibility to all the sources that I am: to all past and future ancestors, to my home country, to all places that I touch down on and that are myself, to all voices, all women, all of my tribe, all people, all earth, and beyond that to all beginnings and endings. In a strange kind of sense [writing] frees me to believe in myself, to be able to speak, to have voice, because I have to; it is my survival.”
One of Harjo’s most frequently anthologized poems, “She Had Some Horses,” describes the “horses” within a woman who struggles to reconcile contradictory personal feelings and experiences to achieve a sense of oneness. The poem concludes:
She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.
These were the same horse.
Please enjoy a selection of Joy Harjo’s poems.
“An American Sunrise,” the flagship poem and namesake of one of Harjo’s books, shows the Indigenous struggle beyond time and contemporary ideas of sin and morality.
We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves. We
were surfacing the edge of our ancestors’ fights, and ready to strike.
It was difficult to lose days in the Indian bar if you were straight.
Easy if you played pool and drank to remember to forget. We
made plans to be professional — and did. And some of us could sing
so we drummed a fire-lit pathway up to those starry stars. Sin
was invented by the Christians, as was the Devil, we sang. We
were the heathens, but needed to be saved from them — thin
chance. We knew we were all related in this story, a little gin
will clarify the dark and make us all feel like dancing. We
had something to do with the origins of blues and jazz
I argued with a Pueblo as I filled the jukebox with dimes in June,
forty years later and we still want justice. We are still America. We
know the rumors of our demise. We spit them out. They die
soon.
“Don’t bother the Earth Spirit” is a quiet, short poem that invites the reader to consider nature not as passive, but as a creator in her own right.
Don’t bother the earth spirit who lives here. She is working on a story. It is the oldest story in the world and it is delicate, changing. If she sees you watching she will invite you in for coffee, give you warm bread, and you will be obligated to stay and listen. But this is no ordinary story. You will have to endure earthquakes, lightning, the deaths of all those you love, the most blinding beauty. It’s a story so compelling you may never want to leave; this is how she traps you. See that stone finger over there? That is the only one who ever escaped.
“Perhaps the World Ends Here” bears witness to our most intimate moments of love, loss, and mundane life.
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
That first cry opens the earth door.
We join the ancestor road.
With our pack of memories
Slung slack on our backs
We venture into the circle
Of destruction,
Which is the circle
Of creation
And make more-
My house is the red earth; it could be the center of the world. I’ve heard New York, Paris, or Tokyo called the center of the world, but I say it is magnificently humble. You could drive by and miss it. Radio waves can obscure it. Words cannot construct it, for there are some sounds left to sacred wordless form. For instance, that fool crow, picking through trash near the corral, understands the center of the world as greasy strips of fat. Just ask him. He doesn’t have to say that the earth has turned scarlet through fierce belief, after centuries of heartbreak and laughter—he perches on the blue bowl of the sky, and laughs.
Background
Joy Harjo (1951 - ) is the daughter of a Creek father and a Cherokee-French mother. She is a graduate of the Universities of New Mexico (B.A., 1976) and Iowa (M.F.A., 1978). The name “harjo” is from an American English spelling of a second element of Muscogee Creek war names based on the word haco 'crazy (in the sense of bravery) foolhardy' such as Cetto Haco, Crazy Snake''.
She has taught creative writing at the University of New Mexico and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana and is currently Professor and Chair of Excellence in Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Harjo has worked to expand our American language, culture, and soul. A Creek Indian and student of First Nation history, Harjo is rooted simultaneously in the natural world, in earth—especially the landscape of the American southwest—and in the spirit world. Aided by these redemptive forces of nature and spirit, incorporating native traditions of prayer and myth into a powerfully contemporary idiom, her visionary justice-seeking art transforms personal and collective bitterness to beauty, fragmentation to wholeness, and trauma to healing.”
Also a performer, Harjo plays saxophone and flutes with the Arrow Dynamics Band and solo, and previously with the band Poetic Justice. She has appeared on HBO's Def Poetry Jam in venues across the U.S. and internationally and has released four award-winning albums. In 2009, she won a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist of the Year.
Harjo directs For Girls Becoming, an arts mentorship program for young Mvskoke women, and is a founding board member of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.
In 1972, she met poet Simon Ortiz of the Acoma Pueblo tribe, with whom she had a daughter, Rainy Dawn (born 1973). She raised both her children as a single mother. Harjo is married to Owen Chopoksa Sapulpa, and is stepmother to his children.
Exploration 1: Where does the world begin and end? Perhaps.
Exploration 2: Who are our future ancestors that Harjo refers to?
Exploration 3: Consider this line from the “Don’t Disturb the Earth Spirit” “See that stone finger over there? That is the only one who ever escaped.” Who or what is the Earth Spirit referred to? Who made the escape and why did this being want to escape?
ReplyDelete1. Where does the world begin and end? That is a mighty exploration. We’ll get back to you.
2. She doesn’t say “our” future ancestors. I think she means the ancestors of our descendants. She looks at the long game.
3. The stone finger belongs to death who wants to escape because he has nothing to give.
The earth spirit is what’s behind this post. There is no escape, which is good.