>> Hi. I'm Marie Arana, Director
of the Library of Congress.
It's a great pleasure to welcome you back
to this edition of "Hear You, Hear Me,"
part of National Book Festival Presents, a
series that keeps you abreast of and engaged
in the wealth of ideas and
inspiration that books can bring us,
especially when we need ideas
and inspiration most.
Today, we're fortunate to have two
writers who are integrally related
to the work we do at the Library of Congress.
They are United States Poets Laurate Tracy K.
Smith who held the post between 2017 and 2019
and our current Poet Laurate Joy Harjo.
Two extraordinarily talented artists who
come from two different corners of America
and two very different histories.
All the same, they join together to talk about
what unites them, what we have in common.
U.S. Poets Laurate date back to 1937, and they
mark our country's deep respect for words,
poetry, and the true set
of poems artfully composed
and deeply felt can tell us
about the human experience.
Tracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth,
Massachusetts and raised in California,
the daughter of a space engineer
and a schoolteacher.
Joy Harjo is a member of the Muskogee
or Creek tribe, born in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
These are two far-flung origins,
profoundly different American experiences,
and yet the two meet in a common place, poetry,
and in their deep regard
for what poetry can give us.
Tracy has offered us a striking abundance
of poems and a number of books, "Duende,"
"American Journal," "Life on
Mars," and "Wade in the Water."
Joy has given us a great many unforgettable
collections, among them "How We Became Human,"
"She Had Some Horses," "Crazy Brave,"
and most recently "An American Sunrise."
Here to interview them is the 14th
Librarian of Congress, herself a spokesperson
for how words can bring us together.
Please welcome Librarian
of Congress Carla Hayden.
>> Thank you, Marie.
It's my honor to be joined today
by two brilliant Poet Laurates,
Joy Harjo and Tracy K. Smith.
We titled our special series "Hear
You, Hear Me," and it's from a poem
by Langston Hughes "Theme for English B."
And, I'd like to just read a passage.
"It's not easy to know what
is true for you or me.
But I guess I'm what I feel and
see and hear, Harlem, I hear you.
hear you, hear me-we two-you,
me, talk on this page."
So, I want to ask both of you what
do you think is the role of poets,
especially during this historic
time in our country?
>> Well, I think the role of poets always
is to listen, to listen for voices,
but also for different versions of truth
and possibility and to amplify them
through our work, to use those other sources
of insight as tools for getting to truth
and better recognition of who and what we are.
And now, I think that's especially important.
I know many of us are choosing to use the
voices, the public voices that we have to do
that work outwardly, to think
together with readers and listeners
about what America is, how we could be.
>> Joy, a poet and a musician now at this time.
>> Yes, well, I think about, you know,
everybody, we all have tools that we were given
to use, and we're at a time of, it's
a great time of incredible challenge
which means incredible possibility,
and we're standing at a fracture.
There's a tremendous fracture in this country.
It didn't just happen.
It's been here, you know, since the beginning,
actually, a fracture that came about with words.
You can even say it came about with words
and actions, and so I think about, well,
what do you do with this fracture.
You know, you can sing across it, say a poem,
you know, we, it's about, you know, healing.
And, I think about how in a lot of
our indigenous language the word,
a poet is a speaker or singer, and often
those speaker singers are the healers.
You know, poetry is, I like what Tracy said.
It's about listening, and that's the biggest
part of being a poet is most of it is listening.
And so, we've been listening for a long time,
and our words come out of, it's poetry for me.
I think many of us poetry is a way
to speak when you have no words.
I mean, how do you put all of this in words?
We try. We see these images.
We see things happening that, you know,
in my generation we thought we had taken,
at least taken care of it to some extent.
And then, here, there's a rupture.
And so, we say, okay, we have more work to do.
>> Poets are known to be especially
sensitive to ideas and thoughts
and everything that's in their environment.
How is this affecting you both personally,
and has your writing been affected
because this is quite a time?
>> Yeah, well, I will say
that I feel a lot of pain.
I feel rage.
I feel a sense of urgent
calling to help in some way.
I feel the burden that I think many people of
color feel in general and especially at times
of crisis to try and help people who don't
understand why we are so worried and adamant
to help them understand what's
going on as we see it.
And, that means using my voice as a poet,
but in lots of different forums, you know.
Making statements, writing letters,
speaking about issues and conditions.
It's draining, but it's also exhilarating.
I find that right now, when I'm doing all of
those other things and don't have the quiet,
private luxurious focus that I choose
to seek out when I want to write a poem,
I'm actually writing more poems
than I have in a long time.
So, I believe that the time is waking
something up within us and giving
or imparting a kind of energy
to rise to the task.
>> Joy?
>> Yes, I've been in the middle of it,
too, with family and history, you know,
looking at history and, well,
all of the stories.
So, I've been called.
A lot of people are asking me about poems,
and I've been in the middle of a memoir called
"For Justice, For Love" which is looking back
through history, through, you know the history
of my, you know, the Muskogee Creek
history, the history of this country,
and you know, the history of becoming a poet.
You know, where those poets who took care of me
like Audre Lorde and June Jordan and, you know,
Leslie Silco who's more known as a novelist.
But, she was also a poet, and she
was there and Meridel Le Sueur.
You know, great poet writer and others
along the way and looking at their lives,
looking at my teachers and some of the
teachers are some of the musicians.
And, saying thank you and looking
at the lessons they taught me.
And, I think it comes down, like Langston Hughes
knows well, you know, we come to these times.
You know, what are we going to do.
You know, we use the tools that we
have, and I think it's possible.
I'm not going to give up.
I have, you know, all the children are ours.
Are the grandchildren are ours.
I've just spent time this morning
with my, even my great grandchildren.
And, you look at them, and
I see, they're all of us.
You know, I see everybody in them.
And, I think, okay, well, it's going to go on.
You know, what we're teaching them with our
lives, how we, you know, how we live our lives.
And, but sometimes the fury,
what do you do with it?
I'm still trying to figure it out.
I think as a kid, a younger, I was
in my 20s, and I started writing.
I think I came to poetry.
I didn't want to be a poet.
I was going to be a painter, and but
it's what helped me deal with fury.
I started writing during native rights movements
with the fury with the love, the tremendous love
that the tremendous love that got people that,
you know, that made, got people, you know,
freed people, that freed
us within our, you know,
spirits and our souls to
go on no matter what hell.
>> Tracy, your beautiful poem "Unrest
in Baton Rouge" speaks to some of that.
Would you mind reading a passage from it?
>> I'd love to.
I mean, that poem was written in response
to, you know, similar incidents, black,
unarmed black citizens dying and the outrage
against those attempting to peacefully protest.
I wanted to figure out something
that could help me make a better kind
of sense than I felt was being made.
And so, this poem counterintuitively,
I think, invoked love.
And, I think love is a challenge.
"Unrest in Baton Rouge.
Our bodies run with ink dark blood.
Blood pools in the pavement's seams.
Is it strange to say love is a language
Few practice, but all, or near all speak?
Even the men in black armor, the ones Jangling
handcuffs and keys, what else Are they
so buffered against, if not love's blade
Sizing up the heart's familiar meat?
We watch and grieve.
We sleep, stir, eat.
Love: the heart sliced open, gutted, clean.
Love: naked almost in the everlasting street,
Skirt lifted by a different kind of breeze."
When I read that poem now and I think
about so many statements of attack,
essentially that are saying those of us who want
to push America to do better don't love America.
I think, no, you're missing it.
Perhaps willfully so.
We love this nation.
We belong to this nation,
and we want to help it.
Love is what fuels so much of the action
and so many of the statements that poets
and others are making at this time.
>> And, the poems help us get from
that heartbreak and the anger.
Both of you mentioned those strong
feelings and that getting to love.
What does it take?
>> Yeah.
>> And, you both are doing it.
And, Tracy, I have to say during your time
as poet laurate, you visited rural areas
in our country, and during this
time with the division that seems
to be definitely front and center.
How were you able to use poetry to bridge
some of those division because you were
in some different areas of the country?
>> Yeah, I was very conscious in
different trips that I was in spaces
where my values were not necessarily the values
that people who were present at the events held.
And yet, every single one of
those trips felt like vulnerable,
honest engagement with strangers that was
characterized by goodwill, a good faith.
You know, I think a poem when you are
sitting down to listen to it and let it speak
to you is an invitation to act in good faith,
and I think that somehow doing that with others,
even with strangers or maybe especially
with strangers, it was so beautiful.
I wish that there was a way to do more community
facing programming, but of course, you know,
we're constrained in that regard now.
>> And, Tracy, you had an interesting
and poignant experience in Kentucky.
>> Yeah. I had a lot of, I mean Kentucky was
a really amazing trip, and there were a lot
of things that stand out in
my memory about that time.
One sort of general one was meeting
people who said, "I came from far away.
I drove for hours to get here
because I come from a community."
There are my children.
"I come from a community that's
racially divided, and I want my kids
to be here and think differently."
Or, specific encounter that we had with a young
girl in a public library in Bowling Green,
Kentucky who said, "You have stories.
How did you know you had stories to tell?
I think I have stories to tell, and even just
the invitation to view your life is a space
that contains, you know, narrative
and sharable information."
I think that's beautiful, and it's beautiful
to be greeted by listeners who are willing
to feel that way about what I'm sharing.
>> And, they wanted to change,
too, or think about a future.
And, Joy, you're going to,
your project, "Living Nations,
Living Words: A Map of First Peoples Poetry."
Your project will hopefully help the country
see native people as living through their poetry
and tying it into social justice.
Could you elaborate more on
that because it flows directly
to what Tracy was doing, too, in terms of this.
>> Right. It's all about community.
You know, and you can't, you know, and
at the middle of, I think at the middle
of any power center is vulnerability
and listening and the inclusion.
We cannot have.
I think the difference, I keep thinking,
hearing the clanking of metal of the, you know,
tools of destruction in your poem
and thinking and yet there's a heart.
Somebody's got a heart.
There's a heart in there somewhere, and
I think for natives in this country,
we deal with this invisibility or people
only seeing us if we're, you know,
like the Washington Redskins which means
redskins is word for bounty, giving, you know,
it's a dead, a redskin is the body of
a dead Indian brought in for bounty.
>> Wow.
>> And, yet, you know, that's what we're
dealing with, and we're also dealing with,
there was a study done by a group IllumiNative,
and we finally have some data to go with,
you know, the stories of natives.
It's another kind of story making data is that a
lot of, a huge percentage, I forget the percent,
of Americans feel, think that we're gone,
that we don't exist anymore, or if we.
Because that's how it is in the American
narrative is we were here in some distant,
misty past, and then we were gone.
And, yet, we are here, and that's the point of
the project is like, hey, you know, we're here.
I became the Poet Laurate,
it's like, yeah, we're poets.
We're jazz musicians.
We're teachers, you know, we're human beings.
I remember when I first started writing poetry
and I thought, and we were in the middle of,
you know, native rights movements.
That's what my poetry started out as
is like, yeah, we're human beings.
And, I thought if I do anything else
with my life or with my poetry is
that people see that we are human beings.
We have cultures.
We have language.
We have, you know, we've contributed.
But, we're often diminished, one because
if we are here it means the story
of America needs a little fixing up.
You know, it's.
>> Say here.
>> Yeah, it's.
>> Being that your poem, "Exile of Memory"
that, could you read a passage from that
because it really speaks to
what you were just saying?
>> Okay. I'll read, it's in several
sections, so I'm just going to read the first
and then the quatrain at the end.
And, this was, I was back in our homelands.
We were moved into Indian Territory or
Oklahoma in, here in Tulsa where I am now.
And, Tulsa is, the derivative of the word means
"town" actually in the Muskogee Creek language.
And, anyway, I'd gone back to
our homelands in the southeast
which is Alabama, Georgia, and so on.
And, this happened.
I remember listening to the old
people saying, "Don't go back.
If you go back, you will open up the grief.
You'll open up that cauldron of grief.
What happened.
Some people don't survive it, you know."
Some people don't survive that cauldron
of anger or, you know, how can you,
you know, just be forced out by gunpoint?
You know, we had nice houses.
It wasn't like we were hiding
in the trees and whatever.
It was, it wasn't, anyway.
"Exile of Memory.
Do not return.
We were warned by one who knows things.
You will only upset the dead.
They will emerge from the
spiral of little houses lined
up in the furrows of marrow and walk the land.
There will be no place in
memory for what they see.
The highways, the houses, the
stores of interlopers perched
over the blood fields where the dead last stood.
And then, what you with your
words in the enemy's language,
do you know how to make a
peaceful road through human memory?
And, what of angry ghosts of history?
Then what?"
And, the last stanza, "I sing my leaving song.
I sing it to the guardian
trees, this beloved earth,
to those who stay here to care for a memory.
I'll sing it until the day I die."
>> You [inaudible] for both, and so I see I
mentioned your article, "Dear Black America."
Do you feel hopeful that this seems to
be a transformative time in the history
of the native people and African Americans?
Do you?
>> I choose to feel hopeful.
I choose to feel heartened that the large
number of people who are taking these questions
to heart for the first time will
remain active in this consciousness.
I have little kids.
When I feel tired of the work it
is to keep going, I look at them,
and I think I have to [inaudible].
>> And, Joy, you mentioned a great
grandchild who gives you inspiration.
[inaudible]
>> That's it.
I mean, that's it, and then you learn, you
get older, like I'm a great grandmother.
That gives me a little authority now.
But, is that you start seeing how the
story field or the ancestral field,
and it starts to become more and more visible.
And then, you realize that it is like a tree,
it's a field of meaning, and there's no,
somebody might go on, but
they're still connected.
It's like you still, you
know, your mother might go,
but that cord, that mother cord is still here.
The grandmother cord is still here.
The great grandmother cord, and then it goes.
And, like, my memoir that
I just, well, finished.
I'll be doing other drafts.
"For Justice, For Love" ends
with an image, it was a dream.
I'm, I dream a lot of things that
happen or that, and in the dream,
I was holding my seventh generation
granddaughter, and I looked at her, and I said,
"You look kind of, you look Japanese."
And, I said, "Now, you look
like your grandmother Raney."
It was interesting to think of my daughter.
My daughter, I said, "You look like your
great, great, great, great grandmother Raney."
And then, I carried her into this world.
So, yes, I do.
I mean, despite it all, we
have to keep, we have to plant.
You know, and that's what Langston Hughes did.
It's what he planted love.
Planted away for, you know, his
work has inspired so many people.
You know, he planted, and that's.
I'm hopeful.
I mean, it doesn't mean we're not going go
through more stuff, you know, and the wound.
Because the wounding is deep,
and it involves all of us.
And, it involves shifting the story, too.
>> Telling it, and I have to ask you
both this because I am a librarian,
and I know that you are working
and doing and creating.
But, are you having any time to read
yourself, and what are you possibly reading?
You mentioned Langston Hughes and
going back and thinking about that.
Or, what are you all reading,
both, if you have time?
>> I'm reading different things.
It's harder.
My attention has changed right now because
of just all of the anxiety in the world,
but I have recently read Danez Smith's
new book of poem called "Homie"
which I think is a perfect book for this time.
And, it's both a, you know, call to awakening
for this country, but it's also a love letter
to the joy of community within
the black community.
And, my colleague Ruha Benjamin at Princeton
has a book called "Race After Technology"
which talks about the ways that the questions
of prejudice, bias, and sort of like surrender
to perspectives that we don't
necessarily agree with,
how technology is driving a
lot more than we bargained for.
>> Yeah, I was turning around all my,
some of my books are stacked here,
and they made me move my camera
because I had them over there.
But, I'm, Toni Morrison's "The Source of
Self Regard" I'm taking moment by moment.
I keep going back and forth, and then I just go
that Frederick Douglas biography
by David Blight.
And then, I'm talking to a lot.
You know, I'm, the older people,
I'm talking to a lot of people.
The older people of our tribe.
I mean, they're almost all gone.
You realize, then, you're the older
people, so you better get it together.
And then, Esperanza Spalding
has been writing an opera.
She's been working with Wayne Shorter.
So, I've been reading her drafts.
>> Wow. [inaudible] different.
>> Yeah. [inaudible] so, I've been doing that,
and a bunch of other stuff
I've been reading, too.
>> It gives you a sense of,
and people look to poets.
And, we know during these times for
that security, some inspiration.
And, if you could, and we're going
to, of course, be broadcasting this
about what would you like to tell the public
because people will be listening and want
to hear from both of you [inaudible].
And, Tracy, your, you did a
letter, "Dear Black America."
>> Yes. That was great.
>> Yeah, I mean.
>> I read it and said all.
This was, it was inspirational
as a person of color.
>> Well, so much of the speaking
and public thinking that many of us
who are black are called to do right
now is essentially for white America,
and I wanted to make a deliberate turn and
to embrace the community that I belong to
and I believe is reviving and rescuing
this country and to just share that love.
I think that if I were going to make a general
statement, I would say people turn to poems
for consolation, and now, especially, I think
it's important to remember that sometimes
that comes through discomfort,
pain, unpleasant self-refection.
And, I think that's the work that we're
being called to do, to seek consolation
in the willingness to do those
difficult things for the greater good.
>> And, poetry can do that.
Poetry, and Joy, what would you say?
>> Man. So, the truth, the thing, it's
interesting when you're writing a memoir,
and we are kind of writing
the memoir of the country
because it is made up of everybody's memories.
It's a collective memoir.
It's the truth.
You start digging into the memory,
and the hardest parts are the ones
that have the most to teach you.
And so, it's important to, and I keep thinking
about the young woman in your audience
in Kentucky, that girl asking about,
you know, her story or that she.
We all are part of this American story,
and our, you know, you may not see.
You know, you rarely see natives
as part of the American story.
But, every one of us has a place
here, so it's really important
that everybody investigate the truth.
You know, like you knowing your grandparents'
names or the great grandparents or, you know,
investigate the truth of the story.
Some of it is painful.
You know, what we do to each other,
and it's often within our own families.
You know. But, those stories,
it's all important.
I mean, if we were to walk around the
whole story, walk around all the memory
and gather it in, you know, it's painful.
It's powerful.
There's a, you know, when you walk through
the story field with the vulnerability
and you make it out the other side, it's
so, even if it's, you can, you know,
hear the blood talking on the ground.
You make it through, and it not only empowers
you, but you're part of everyone else.
It empowers.
Ultimately, it can empower everyone.
>> Well, I want to thank you on behalf
of the people who are viewing both
and getting some inspiration and some hope
during this time, and poetry, I believe,
can help us and give us a place to
put feelings and to express them.
So, I want to thank both of you
for this, and I have to tell you.
I will be looking at and
picking up some of the books
that you both recommended during this time.
So, thank you, and stay well.
>> Okay. Thank you.