Joy Harjo Quotes

A story matrix connects all of us.
There are rules, processes, and circles of responsibility in this world. And the story begins exactly where it is supposed to begin. We cannot skip any part.

I will see you again, is one of the names for blue — A color beyond the human sky of mind — One third up the ladder of blue is where we sit for grief —

In a way, we [poets] are listeners. I go to poetry because I don’t have the words.” —

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame. Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction. Ask for forgiveness. Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

But your half-grin
is the only image that comes clear.
All the words lead to that

Audiences for poetry are growing because of the turmoil in our country–political shifts, climate shifts. When there’s uncertainty, when you’re looking for meaning beyond this world–that takes people to poetry. We need something to counter the hate speech, the divisiveness, and it’s possible with poetry.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you.
Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them.

America has always been multicultural, before the term became ubiquitous, before colonization, and it will be after.

You took me once
to an older part of earth
I'd never seen — where monsters were born
and killed.
They sacrificed everything
and nothing
for a taste of this
life.

I always play or perform music with my poetry. When poetry came into the world, it did not arrive by itself, but it came with music and dance.

For the true warriors of the world, fighting is the last resort to solving a conflict. Every effort is made to avoid bloodshed

Eventually, we all make it home, and we each make an individual path by any means.

I’m not afraid of love
or its consequence of light.

It’s not easy to say this
or anything when my entrails
dangle between paradise
and fear.

I am ashamed
I never had the words
to carry a friend from her death
to the stars
correctly.

Or the words to keep
my people safe
from drought
or gunshot.

The stars who were created by words
are circling over this house
formed of calcium, of blood

this house
in danger of being torn apart
by stones of fear.

If these words can do anything
if these songs can do anything
I say bless this house
with stars.

Transfix us with love.

As I started a new life in Arizona, I knew I was losing myself. Even a lost place within yourself is a place, albeit liminal, a kind of border town. You can make a temporary home if you need to from found materials and shreds of forgotten dreams, and you can even dress to appear somewhat ordinary as you run away, a refugee from yourself. I rolled up the map of my known world and set it aside for some kind of strange autonomy.

Every collection of poetry makes a force field of energy. When creating you give yourself over to it. In the fiercest moments of imagination the artist may not know where they are going, the how and when of it, and it doesn't matter. What matters is the process regenerates and meaning shifts at every turn.