Joy Harjo Quotes

Poetry keeps the door open to awe and ensures that we will find our way through the broken heart field of wars, losses and betrayals to understanding, compassion and gathering together.

There were no Native names in the American book of poetry when I began writing poetry, though there are many.

Do not feed the monsters.
Some are wandering thought forms, looking for a place to set up house.
Some are sent to you deliberately. They come from arrows of gossip, jealousy or envy — and inadvertently from thoughtlessness.
They feed on your attention, and feast on your fear.

What we haven't imagined will one day
spit us out
magnificent and simple.

All acts of kindness are lights in the war for justice.

I would think that everyone wants a place for their children to live, and to live peaceably, but why aren’t we included in — as human? You know, we’re still being excluded, and we’re still — it’s still there. Those same people that moved us are still there. The same people that signed off and drove us and forced us out of the South, into the — Tulsa, they’re still there.

Be who you are, even if it kills you.

It will. Over and over again.
Even as you live.

Break my heart, why don't you?

I remember at one point going out to do a story, just after the Church Rock uranium spill, and there were children out playing in the water and in the livestock and the Navajo speakers were saying, "We need a word." How do we come up with a word that will tell the people that even though you can't see it, there is something dangerous here that can harm you and you can't use these waters, when it was the only source of water for their livestock?

We are story gatherers. That's what we humans do.

I can remind people that they use poetry, go to poetry, frequently, and may not even know they are. A lot of song lyrics are poetry. They go to poetry for a transformational moment, to speak when there are no words to speak.

My heart is taken by you
and these mornings since I am a horse running towards
a cracked sky where there are countless dawns
breaking simultaneously.
There are two moons on the horizon
and for you
I have broken loose.

It’s about learning to listen, much like in music. You can train your ears to history. You can train your ears to the earth. You can train your ears to the wind. It’s important to listen and then to study the world, like astronomy or geology or the names of birds. A lot of poets can be semihistorians. Poetry is very mathematical. There’s a lot in the theoretical parts that is similar. Quantum physicists remind me of mystics. They are aware of what happens in timelessness, though they speak of it through theories and equations.

In 1990 a congress of indigenous peoples met outside of Quito, Ecuador, to discuss the Columbian Quincentenary, a celebration by immigrant populations of the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the western hemisphere on his financed expedition to find a trade route to India. Tribal people came from all of the Americas and met to discuss the destructive and monumental changes since this European explorer’s arrival. We met together to gain insight and strength and ponder how we would continue to move forward past the massive destruction and disrespect of the earth mind, body and spirit, and to continue our sovereignty as Native nations. In the women’s circle, a striking Bolivian Indian woman in a bowler hat stood up. She welcomed us, and noted that she was surprised at all of the Natives attending from the United States. “We thought John Wayne had killed all of you.” (This was not a joke.)

And why,” she asked, “Do you call yourselves America? This hemisphere is one body, one person. She is America.

It hasn't always been this way, because glaciers
who are ice ghosts create oceans, carve earth
and shape this city here, by the sound.
They swim backwards in time.