In the middle of all the tension and destruction, there is … - Joy Harjo

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In the middle of all the tension and destruction, there is a laughter of absolute sanity that might sound like someone insane. Maybe laughter is the voice of sense. I always tell my students that you cannot take everything too seriously because at will kill you. If you carry bitterness and hatred around, it gives you arthritis, rheumatism, cancer. Certainly, I have to be aware of everything that is happening, but I can't let it kill me. (1994)

Joy Harjo

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About Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo (May 9, 1951) is a poet, musician, author and the first Native American United States Poet Laureate.

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Muriel Rukeyser Denise Levertov Linda Hogan Mary Oliver William Stafford

Additional quotes by Joy Harjo

There is a field
of talking blood
that I have not been able
to reach,
not even with knives,
not yet.

Her own daughter
was born, like she had been, in either place
or all places, so she could leave, leap
into the sound she had always heard,
a voice like water, like the gods weaving
against sundown in a scarlet light.

We will keep going despite dark
Or a madman in a white house dream.

In the middle of all the tension and destruction, there is a laughter of absolute sanity that might sound like someone insane. Maybe laughter is the … - Joy Harjo

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