Joy Harjo - Poet Warrior

ALSO BY JOY HARJO

Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology (editor)

When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry (editor, with LeAnne Howe, Jennifer Elise Foerster, and contributing editors)

An American Sunrise

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

Crazy Brave: A Memoir

Soul Talk, Song Language: Conversations with Joy Harjo (with Tanaya Winder)

For a Girl Becoming

She Had Some Horses

How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, 19752001

A Map to the Next World

The Good Luck Cat

Reinventing the Enemys Language: Contemporary Native Womens Writings of North America (editor, with Gloria Bird)

The Spiral of Memory (edited by Laura Coltelli)

The Woman Who Fell from the Sky

Fishing

In Mad Love and War

Secrets from the Center of the World (with photographs by Stephen E. Strom)

What Moon Drove Me to This?

The Last Song

MUSIC ALBUMS

I Pray for My Enemies

Red Dre ams: A Trail Beyond Tears

Winding Through the Milky Way

She Had Some Horses

Native Joy for Real

Letter from the End of the Twentieth Century

PLAYS

We Were There When Jazz Was Invented

Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light

POET
WARRIOR

A MEMOIR

JOY HARJO

Copyright 2021 by Joy Harjo

All rights reserved

First Edition

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Jacket design: Sarahmay Wilkinson
Jacket artwork: She Comes With Fire and Weaves the World,
beadwork, by Rainy Dawn Ortiz
Jacket photograph: Melissa Lukenbaugh
Book design by Beth Steidle
Production manager: Beth Steidle

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Harjo, Joy, author.

Title: Poet warrior : a memoir / Joy Harjo.

Description: First edition. | New York, N.Y. : W. W. Norton & Company, [2021]

Identifiers: LCCN 2021025215 | ISBN 9780393248524 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9780393248531 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Harjo, Joy. |
Poets, American20th centuryBiography. | Poets, American21st centuryBiography. | Indian women authorsUnited StatesBiography. | LCGFT: Autobiographies. | Autobiographical poetry.
Classification: LCC PS3558.A62423 Z46 2021 | DDC 818/.5403 [B]dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021025215

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 15 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS

For the poets, dreamers, visionaries, and risk takers who planted light in the field of darkness so we could rise up

For our children, great-grandchildren, and all those who follow generation by generation in the story of becoming

For the water spider, who, when the earth was covered with water, carried an ember on her back so we could make fire to keep the story going.

For Owen Chopoksa Sapulpa, who walks close to me in the story

Contents

POET
WARRIOR

To imagine the spirit of poetry is much like imagining the shape and size of the knowing. It is a kind of resurrection light; it is the tall ancestor spirit who has been with me since the beginning, or a bear or a hummingbird. It is a hundred horses running the land in a soft mist, or it is a woman undressing for her beloved in firelight. It is none of these things. It is more than everything.

Youre coming with me, poor thing. You dont know how to listen. You dont know how to speak. You dont know how to sing. I will teach you.

That first earth gift of breathing

Opened your body, these lungs, this heart

Gave birth to the ability to interact

With dreaming

You are a story fed by generations

You carry songs of grief, triumph

Thankfulness and joy

Feel their power as they ascend

Within you

As you walk, run swiftly, even fly

Into infinite possibility

Let go that which burdens you

Let go any acts of unkindness or brutality

From or against you

Let go that which has burdened your family

Your community, your nation

Or disturbed your soul

Let go one breath into another

Pray thankfulness for this Earth we are

For this becoming we are

For this sunlight touching skin we are

For the cooling of the dark we are

Listen now as Earth sheds her skin

Listen as the generations move

One against the other to make power

We are bringing in a new story

We will be accompanied by ancient songs

And will celebrate together

Breathe this new dawn

Assist it as it opens its mouth

To breathe.

You might know me first through a poem, or poetry.

Or you might have heard me speak or sing, or seen my image lined up with others who caught attention.

Or I am no one familiar, an anonymous voice through the night on the radio, or internet, or in the street calling someone home.

Or Im memorys voice catching your ears when you thought you were done with listening.

You might be alone in your room, or in a corner of the house where you have made your escape, or in a tree or leaning on a rock, and you carry a book, a sketchpad, a pen, or a knife

Or you may have no place at all.

You could be wrapped in rags on the street, detained in a cage at a border,

or trapped in other stories of living. Your heart beats out

the human song of survival.

You are looking for words to sustain you, to counter despair.

Come closer so I can feel your breath. You could be my daughter, my son. My grandchild or great-grandchild. You might be my sister, cousin, uncle, or aunt.

In the tradition of the Old Ones, all children are deemed as ours.

We are all related.

Or I am speaking to you in the future, when you are lost in the story and

I have crossed the bridge of time into tomorrow.

Girl-Warrior perched on the sky ledge

Overlooking the turquoise, green, and blue garden

Of ocean and earth.

From there she could hear the winds

Lifting from their birthing places

She could hear where sound began.

The winds carried the murmuring of lovers

On Earth to Girl-Warriors ears

He was a tall, handsome man whose sensitivity

Was threaded with ancestral love.

He came from tribal leaders who had the humility and heart

To lead through the most difficult striving.

He was water.

She came to his shoulder, her dark auburn hair

Made a halo for her beauty.

She wrote and sang songs that called

What she needed into her hands.

Her heart had room for all growing things,