Poet Warrior

by Joy Harjo

a kind of sensitivity, honed by experiencing an invading culture and figuring out how best to move to save your life.

A family is essentially a field of stories, each intricately connected.

we do not need to carry a story that is unbearable. We can observe the story, which is mental; feel the story, which is physical; let the story go, which is emotional; then forgive the story, which is spiritual, after which we use the materials of it to build a house of knowledge.

I was learning that speaking was fraught with consequences.

Alexander Posey.

Relative and founder of 1st NA daily in US

Fus Fixico Letters were written from a fictional voice of local wit, wisdom, and dialect of a tribal citizen of our Creek Nation.

We were not taught how this poetry could bring rain, turn the heart of a lover, speak truth in a dying country, undo the rein of a dictator. Or what in the poem gave it that kind of power. We did not know how poetry lived in our tribal communities, often sung or in the language of speeches and speaking, doing the hard work of ritual.

her soul’s house Where knowledge did not depend on words Of faulty human languages.

heart territory

HOW LOVE BLOWS THROUGH THE TREES

Amazing poem

There were many beauties in this age For everything was immensely itself: Green greener than the impossibility of green, the taste of wind after its slide through dew grass at dawn, Or language running through a tangle of wordlessness in her mouth.

Poetry is a tool for navigating transformation,

Learning the Navajo language for my “foreign” language requirement gave me a renewed sense of the power inherent in language and what language is capable of translating, as I wrote in the English language.

The power of insight and compassion Is fiercely humble and helpful.

A POSTCOLONIAL TALE

Another Amazing poem

And when we laugh, we’re indestructible. No story or song will translate the full impact of falling, or the inverse power of rising up. Of rising up.

To hear poetry in person is to experience poetry as it is traditionally meant to be experienced, that is, you feel it breathe and experience how it travels out dynamically to become part of the winds skirting the earth, even as we inhale and take the words into our bloodstream. To speak is to bring into being. Poetry can bring rain, make someone fall in love, can hold the grief of a nation. Poetry is essentially an oral art whose roots are intertwined with music and dance.

Humans were created by mistake. Someone laughed and we came crawling out. That was the beginning of the drama;