Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as U.S. poet laureate,
invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble
realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic, and
wise follow-up to Crazy Brave, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came
to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to
unearth the truth and demand justice.
Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music
that she first encountered as a child, and the messengers of a changing
earth--owls heralding grief, resilient desert plants, and a smooth green
snake curled up in surprise. She celebrates the influences that shaped
her poetry, among them Audre Lorde, N. Scott Momaday, Walt Whitman,
Muscogee stomp dance call-and-response, Navajo horse songs, rain, and
sunrise. In absorbing, incantatory prose, Harjo grieves at the loss of
her mother, reckons with the theft of her ancestral homeland, and sheds
light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife, and
community member.
Moving fluidly between prose, song, and poetry, Harjo recounts a
luminous journey of becoming, a spiritual map that will help us all find
home. Poet Warrior sings with the jazz, blues, tenderness, and bravery
that we know as distinctly Joy Harjo.
