I’m a great-grandmother now. I was a grandmother in my 30s and a teenage mother. And what that’s given me is a kind of a broader sense of the story f… - Joy Harjo

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.

Am Not Ready to Die Yet My death peers at the world through a plumeria tree The tree looks out over the neighbor’s house to the Pacific A blue water spirit commands this part of the earth mind Without question, it rules from the kingdom of secrets And tremendous fishes. I was once given to the water. My ashes will return there, But I am not ready to die yet — This morning I carry the desire to live, inside my thigh It pulses there: a banyan, a mynah bird, or a young impatient wind Until I am ready to fly again, over the pungent flowers Over the sawing and drilling workmen making a mess In the yard of the house next door — It is endless, this map of eternity. Beware the water monster that lives at the borders of doubt — He can swallow everything whole: all the delectable mangoes, dreams, and even the most faithful of planets — I was once given to the water. My ashes will return there, But I am not ready to die yet — And when it happens, as it certainly will, the lights Will go on in the city and the city will go on shining At the edge of the water — it is endless — this earthy mind — There will be flowers. There are always flowers, And a fine blessing rain will fall through the net of the clouds Bearing offerings to the stones, and to all who linger. It will be a day like any other. Someone will be hammering; someone will be frying fish. And at noon the workmen will go home to eat poi, pork, and rice.

Every poem has so many poetry ancestors. How can we construct a poetry ancestor map of America that would include and start off with poetry of indigenous nations? Those strands would continue into the present with the wonderful young Native poets we have right now. I guess what strikes me is the diversity—the diversity of Native poetry, which was here and is here and is still growing, and the diversity of American poetry, which has roots all over the world—and I’ve always wanted to show that, ultimately, there’s a root system that’s connected all over the Americas, which is one body and all over the world. A healthy ecosystem is a system of diversity. That’s the same thing in poetry, different poetry streams. It’s the same thing with peoples in a country.