jharjo Female Speaker: From the
Library of Congress in Washington,
D.C. Wendy Maloney:
I'm Wendy Maloney,
and I work for the U.S. Copyright
Office of the Library of Congress.
It's my pleasure this morning
to introduce Joy Harjo.
Joy Harjo is an
internationally-known poet,
performer, writer, and musician
of the Muscogee Creek nation.
Her seven books of poetry, including
"How We Became Human," "New
and Selected Poems," "The
Woman Who Fell from the Sky,"
and "She Had Some Horses,"
have garnered many awards.
These include the New Mexico
Governor's Award for Excellence
in the Arts, the Lifetime
Achievement Award
from the Native Writers
Circle of the Americas,
the William Carlos Williams Award
from the Poetry Society of America,
and the Witter Bynner
Poetry Fellowship.
Harjo has also released four
award-winning CDs of original music.
In 2009, she won a Native American
music award, known as a Nammy,
for best female artist of the year,
for her album "Winding
through the Milky Way."
She also performs a one-woman
show, "Wings of Night Sky,
Wings of Morning Light,"
which premiered
at the Wells-Fargo Theater
in Los Angeles in 2009.
Harjo has received a Rasmussen
U.S. Artist's Fellowship,
which comes with a $50,000
stipend in recognition
of her cultural contributions.
She's also a founding board member
of the Native Arts and
Cultures Foundation.
Harjo's most recent work
is a memoir, "Crazy Brave,"
published by W.W. Norton in July.
A review calls the book
"part autobiography,
part prose poem, and
part mythology."
Harjo traces the origin
of her poetic, musical,
and theatrical careers, but she
offers much more than reminiscences.
Her story is an account of
the forging of a woman's soul,
the hammer blows striking, only
to reshape her into a sharp
and powerful blade
of words and music.
This raw and radiant
coming-of-age story invites readers
to breathe the light in and discover
their own hidden capabilities.
With that, please welcome Joy Harjo.
[applause] Joy Harjo: Thank you,
Madoa [spelled phonetically],
for that introduction, and
I'm really honored to be here.
Good morning, D.C. [laughs] Anyway,
I'm going to start off with a song.
You know, each of us is a point on
a story trail of a lot of people,
and my story begins -- and all
of our stories begin --
long before we're born.
Things are set into place.
We're born to a family, we're born
to nations, and for Native people,
we're part of several nations,
and -- or at least two --
our own tribal nations and the U.S.
-- and we're born to a generation,
and we're the story
trail of a lot of people.
On my mother's side, I'm
Cherokee, Irish, French,
which is kind of a potent
collision and cultural interchange,
and on my father's side, I'm a
member of the Muscogee Creek nation
and of European peoples and African.
So the story -- I'm a point, a place
in the story train, and we're all --
every one of us --
is making a story.
In fact, you know, I've wondered
what use humans were in this world,
and then I think, you know,
we're about making stories.
That's what we do.
I mean, this is really -- this
whole National Book Fair is
about the story matrix, and
we're all active participants.
We're all making stories right now.
So I want to start off with a
story, and, you know, I'm also --
I'm a member of my father's
tribe and I'm also Cherokee,
and they don't necessarily
get along.
They didn't get along historically
and are very different, but,
you know, there's always
grand experiments.
I think this country, the
United States of America,
is a grand experiment
by the creator [laughs],
who says "let's see what
can happen," you know,
"if we start off start out
with an indigenous country."
We would be a lot like -- if
there had not had not been the
colonization, we would be a lot
like, at least if it happened later,
we would be a lot like
India, with all the languages
and all the mini-cultures
living, you know?
We still are, but we've had to --
we've had to revive ourselves
after a tremendous holocaust.
We were 100 percent -- almost 100,
because there's always
people traveling about.
That's how humans are.
And we were almost 100
percent of this population,
and now we're one-half
of 1 percent and growing,
and that tells you something
about the story of America.
It's not just Indian country.
It's the story of America
and it's all our story.
So my story here is just
a little piece of that.
And it's "memoir," which is
memory, and we know memory --
we have shared memories,
and we often can have a
very different recollection
than our brothers and
sisters, although my family,
when they read this, they
liked it and they said, "Well,
the only thing is, it was worse.
It was actually worse."
You know, it was actually worse.
And I thought, okay.
This is a song that was brought
over on the Trail of Tears
when our people were forcibly moved
from the Alabama/Georgia area,
and my grandfathers --
I'm seven generations,
and my generation is seven
generations from that removal,
which makes a lot of
sense when you think
about what our generation has
done in any country, you know,
because we became the speakers
and the very visible singers
in the country in a way
that wasn't for a long time.
[sings in Muscogee Creek] [applause]
So the story starts actually
with a vision in which I
saw how every story matters.
I was taken by a guardian,
one of the earth guardians way
above the earth, and I was shown
how every story, every word,
every gesture that we do
matters to everyone else.
And then it starts with being --
before language, when
I'm standing in the car.
That was before seat belts, which
dates me, and listening to music.
Music has always been
important to me.
And I was listening to -- I later
realized it was Miles Davis' "Riff,"
and the world opened up
when I was in that sound.
Every sound, every
word holds possibility,
and the world blossomed.
Even though I didn't have the
words to say it, with every book
or creative project you learn
something, and in this book,
I remembered how deep the
consciousness is of children.
It's really deep.
When we carry that
with us, you know,
it's what carries us all
through, but often we forget
when we're dealing with children,
or, you know, it's a strange society
that does not value the
work of those people working
on behalf of the children.
[applause] Once, I was so small,
I could barely see over the top
of the back seat of the black
Cadillac my father bought
with his Indian oil money.
He polished and tuned his car daily.
I wanted to see everything.
This was around the time I acquired
language when something happened
that changed my relationship
to the spin of the world.
It changed even the way
I looked at the sun.
This suspended integer of time
probably escaped ordinary notice
in my parents' universe,
which informed most
of my vision in the ordinary world.
They were still on the present gods.
We were driving somewhere in Tulsa,
the northern border
of the Creek Nation.
I don't know where we were
going or where we had been,
but I know the sun was boiling the
asphalt, the car windows were open
for any breeze as I
stood on tip-toes
on the floorboard behind
my father, a handsome god,
who smelled of Old Spice,
whose slick black hair was
always impeccably groomed.
His clothes perfectly
creased and ironed.
The radio was on.
Even then, I loved
the radio, jukeboxes,
or any magic thing containing music.
I wonder what signaled this moment.
A loop of time that, on first
glance, could be any place in time.
I became acutely aware of the line
the jazz trumpeter was playing,
a sound I later associated
with Miles Davis.
I didn't know the words
"jazz" or "trumpet."
I didn't know -- I don't know how
to say it with what words or sounds,
but in that confluence of
hot, southern afternoon,
in the breeze of aftershave and
humidity, I followed that sound
to the beginning, to
the birth of sound.
I was suspended in whirling stars.
I grieved my parents failings --
my own life, which I saw stretching
the length of that rhapsody.
My rite of passage into the world
of humanity occurred
then, through jazz.
The music was a startling bridge
between familiar and strange lands.
I heard stomp-dance shells singing.
I saw suits, satin, fine hats.
I heard workers singing
in the fields.
It was a way to speak beyond the
confines of ordinary language.
I still hear it.
And I say that my people
were there when jazz
and blues came into the world.
In fact, I just got a
public theater commission
to write a play that
will prove that.
[applause] So not only did
we have the different tribal
and group things working with my
parents, we also -- my parents --
this is just a little section.
And my mother was fire.
You know, people, we all tend to
be one kind of element or another;
some people are more balanced.
But my mother's element was fire
and my father's element was water.
And you can imagine when those
elements meet each other.
Much different than earth
and water, or fire and air.
My mother-to-be was fire.
Those of fire move about the earth
with inspiration and purpose.
They are creative, and can consume
and be consumed by their desire.
They are looking for purpose,
a place in which to create.
They can be so entranced with
the excitement of creation
that their dreams burn
up, turn to ashes.
My father-to-be was of the
water, and could not find a hold
on the banks of earthiness.
Water people can easily get lost.
And they may not comprehend
that they are lost.
They succumb easily to the
spirits of alcohol and drugs.
They will always search for a vision
that cannot be found on earth.
So the story is -- the
story I ran away from --
I was 14 years behind
contract at Norton.
Something not heard of, usually.
I thought I was only seven years.
I'd written other books for Norton.
In that time, I'd done CDs of music,
but I realized I was running --
and I had done different drafts.
There were several books I wrote
before this one, and much larger,
but I realized that I was running
away from the story that needed
to be told, which was really a story
about becoming an artist, about --
as much as anything else.
So my story takes me through growing
up in Tulsa until my divorce,
a step-father who was
quite evil, actually,
and then getting away
the opportunity to go
to an Indian Arts school
that saved my life
and saved the lives of many of us.
And then I wound up, you
know, first drawman --
one of the first Native
drawman dance troops,
and then a teenage mother living
back in Oklahoma, living on nothing.
And I used to walk around town --
and we all come into
this life with gifts,
and we know when we're far away
from our story in the story matrix.
We know when we're far, far
away, and maybe sometimes we need
to be far, far away in the
hinterlands of ourselves
to really be able to ultimately
understand ourselves and others,
and this is about one of
those moments when I'm walking
around town with nothing.
I couldn't buy anything in
the stores, we were living
on commodity cheese, and squirrels,
and whatever we could get.
When I lived in Tahlequah,
I used to walk through town,
up and down hills, along
the creek, by store fronts,
with items I had no money to buy.
I was -- I walked when
I was hugely pregnant,
and then after my son was born.
It was my time alone.
As I walked, I could hear my
abandoned dreams making a racket
in my soul.
They urged me out the door or up in
the night so they could speak to me.
They wanted form, line,
story, and melody,
and did not understand why I had
made this unnecessary detour.
"Think for yourself, girl.
Your people didn't
walk all that way just
so you could lay down their dreams."
I wanted more, and I didn't
know how I would get it.
My days were consumed with
the drudgery of survival.
I took care of the
household, made meals of beans,
fried potatoes, and cheap meat.
I negotiated with a husband
who was essentially a boy.
He didn't know how to grow up.
His father had abandoned the
family and he had no father map.
There were flashes of
inspiration and joy.
I saw my son sitting by the screen
door making dirt parachutes,
his fine baby hair lit by the
sun, singing with the radio.
And my step-daughter, in a
striped jumper with balloons,
and on her fourth birthday,
climbing up swings in a park.
But this wasn't enough to sustain
the need for artistic expression.
I believe that if you do not answer
the noise and urgency of your gifts,
they will turn on you or drag you
down with their immense
sadness at being abandoned.
And then -- [applause].
Another little story about
living back in Tulsa.
At that point, I wasn't working
cleaning rooms in the hospital,
but I was about to -- I was just
about to get a job working
in a pizza restaurant.
But this was a strange --
sometimes strange things happen.
Another sign of spring
was the posters announcing
that the circus was coming to town,
and again, I'm a teenage mother
at this point, living in Tulsa.
We got discount passes
from the grocery store.
I took the kids and my sister-in-law
to the Sunday afternoon show.
It was my first venture out in
over a year and I felt expansive.
The arena was packed with families
and the city's kids were swirling
with snacks, circus
toys, and excitement.
We sat next to an aisle for
easier access to the bathrooms.
The girls asked about everything
as we waited for the show.
They wanted to know what
time the show started exactly
and how long would it be
before the show started.
Where were the tigers?
Could they have balloons?
If they couldn't have a balloon,
could they ride the elephant?
Or why couldn't we sit closer so we
could see better, and could they go
to the bathroom even though they
had just been a few minutes ago.
As I answered, I watched
people and imagined their lives
and how I would paint them,
rejuvenated by the smell
of popcorn and change in scenery.
Out of the churning crowds came
a slim man in tights and a cape.
As he headed up for the ring,
people parted to let him by,
an incongruous figure in the
middle of the flatly ordinary.
He stopped next to me and
surprised me by speaking to me.
At first, I thought he needed
directions or had mistaken me
for someone else, but he
casually introduced himself as one
of the brothers of the
featured trapeze act,
the Flying Something-or-Other
Brothers.
I felt suddenly awkward
and mumbled a response.
I didn't know what I had
done to garner his attention.
I had forgotten how to speak
to anyone but small children
and a husband who was so desperate
for youth and fun that he had taken
to riding around and drinking
beer with his high school friends.
This strange man from Italy was the
first person who had talked to me
in months, the only one
who had asked me a direct
question about my own life.
I responded -- [laughs] --
by talking about my husband.
I told the cape-performer who
had suddenly befriended me
that my husband had been a dancer
who was compared, by critics,
to Rudolf Nureyev, when
we performed together
in the Indian school troupe.
He had many offers to join
dance companies in the east,
but had turned them down.
I nervously talked up his
attributes, but I really didn't know
where I was going with any of it.
Then, I agreed to meet the
man after the performance.
When I look back, I can imagine how
I must have appeared that afternoon.
A vulnerable young woman
dressed neatly but poorly,
accompanied by an infant
and by children waving
their cotton candy clouds.
That afternoon, the children
and I watched the flying
brothers swing gracefully
from one small platform to another.
I began to consider what it would
be like to fly like this man,
beyond fear, from Italy,
who traveled the world,
flying into space, risking his life
while the crowd watched in awe.
It was then I became convinced
that this was a job my agile
husband could learn -- [laughs] --
as quickly and easily as he had
learned to toss and twist pizzas.
We could travel together and
move into a world much larger
than the one that was squeezing us
flat, far, far away from his mother.
I don't remember how we got from
the circus from the pizzeria
where my husband was
working the afternoon shift.
The sun came into the colored,
dark glass in the restaurant
as the manager retrieved my
husband from the kitchen.
I was excited about the possibility
of something that might engage him,
use his dancer skills, and keep
everyone in food and clothes.
I introduced the acrobat
to my husband.
They were civil to each
other as I explained my idea.
A ripple of tension
coursed through all of us.
It was my dream of
flying, my fantasy.
It didn't belong to anyone else.
After I left the pizza parlor that
afternoon, the flying man insisted
on accompanying me to
my apartment and waited
as I put the children
down for their naps.
I was confused about his intentions,
but offered him coffee, water,
and food, which he declined.
Then, he praised my beauty
and asked me to leave
with him immediate for Corsica.
[laughter] The exhilaration of
the force of possibility pinned me
for a moment in the slant
of the late afternoon sun.
This was what I had been
waiting for, but it wouldn't fit,
and nothing I could do
would make it fit into a map
that was apparently
there, but not there.
I told him I couldn't go anywhere,
not even Corsica; I had children.
I ask him to leave.
The circus left town that afternoon.
My husband lost his job
at the pizzeria a few weeks
later, as I had predicted.
We moved to another part
of town after he found work
in another pizza restaurant,
and his mother followed us.
[laughter] And then another piece.
This is later.
I went to the University --
I wound up leaving Oklahoma,
going back to New Mexico, and
getting into the University
of New Mexico to study art.
And I became a painting
major, although I got in first
because I was going into
pre-med, and got all kinds of help
because I was going to premed.
When I changed my major to
art, that help lessened,
and then when I changed it to
poetry three or four years later,
nobody wanted to help me.
[laughs] But I made it.
I mean, it is about
those dreams happening.
I would never -- I never saw myself
becoming a poet, but the spirit
of poetry came to me, and I write
about that moment in here --
came to me, the actually
spirit of poetry,
and said, "You're coming with me."
And I had no choice, because if I
would have left that, I would have,
like those dreams clattering
and bothering, it would never --
I would never have found rest.
Just like saxophone.
That was part of the story.
So this was as a student at
the University of New Mexico.
That night, as we walked home
from the bar and I waited
for him behind the motel,
he seemed to take forever.
It was about 2:30 in the
morning, and as I stood there,
the avenue grew quieter
after the initial rush
of traffic from the bar.
The desk lamp inside the
motel office made me lonely.
I felt far away from everything.
I carried an ache under my
ribs that was like radar.
It told me I was miles away
from the world I intended
to make for my son and myself.
I saw my easel set up in
the corner of the living
in our apartment next
to my son's box of toys.
I imagined having the money
to walk up to the motel office
to rent a room of my own.
I knew what I would do.
I would sleep until I
could sleep no more.
I would wake up with my
dreams, and listen, and sketch,
and paint the visions I had put
aside to take care of everyone else.
I recalled the dream I had had of
a daughter who wanted to be born.
I'd been painting all night
when she appeared to me.
She was a baby with fat cheeks, and
then there she was, a grown woman.
She asked me to give birth to her.
"This isn't a good
time," I told her.
[laughs] I was in the middle of
finals and assisting and planning
for a protest for the killing
of Navajo's street drugs for fun
by some white high school students.
They had just been questioned
and set free with no punishment.
"Why come into this kind of world?"
I asked her.
Her intent made a fine,
unwavering line
that connected my heart to hers.
I walked behind the
motel to look for him.
I found his shoes under a tree.
Beyond them were his socks,
like two dark salamanders.
A little farther, beyond
his socks, was his belt.
And then I followed a
trail of pants, shirt,
and underwear until I was standing
in the courtyard of the motel.
My stomach turned and twisted
as I considered all the scenarios
a naked, drunk Indian man might get
into in a motel on the
main street of the city.
I heard a splash in the pool.
I remember thinking,
"He's Pueblo Indian.
He can't swim."
[laughter] I considered
leaving him there to flounder.
It would be his foolish fault as
well as the fault of the society
that builds a city over holy places.
At that moment, his disappearance
would be a sudden relief.
It was then I first felt our
daughter moving within me.
She awakened me with
a flutter, a kick.
As I walked to the pool, I didn't
know whether to laugh or cry.
I never told her father
about the night she showed
up to announce her intentions,
or how I saw her spirit
when she was conceived, wavering
above us on a fine sheen of light.
I never told my daughter how I
pulled her father from deep water.
[applause] And then I'll close
with this little piece before --
we're going to do 10
minutes of Q-and-A,
not that I have any answers.
I have a lot of questions.
[laughs] So this comes after a dream
of the chase that I had that began
around the time our father left home
when I was about eight years old,
and it began with the
sound like a panic.
I don't know if you've
ever heard those bull roars
like [sound effect],
and they sound like --
it's like an opening between
other worlds and this one.
And in that dream, I would begin
running, and one night, one late --
one night around this time, and I'd
written my last paper for a class,
and I heard the sound,
and I started running.
The next thing I know, I was
cornered in this white room
and I couldn't find my voice,
because that's how I would get
out of this, I would start to yell,
and if I could make my voice make it
to the other side and touch into
my body, then I could be free.
But it wouldn't happen.
And I never -- this
had never happened
where I could not throw my
voice to make a life line.
Next thing I know, I heard this
snuffled, congested breathing --
[breathes heavily]
-- and then I looked,
and I had never looked
at the monster.
And it was like a horror
that you cannot describe.
I cannot -- you cannot describe it.
And at the same time, I
realized that I was really tired
of this chase, that I
couldn't do it anymore,
that I had done it for too long.
And just when I was about
to give up, the knowing,
and I talk about the
knowing in here.
We all have the knowing.
The knowing reminded me
that I knew how to fly.
Actually, I've given -- used to give
flying lessons on the astral plane.
But my knowing says,
"You know how to fly."
So I thought, "fly,"
and then I flew up,
and that monster flew up with me.
I thought, "Well, what do I do now?"
But then, when I gave up and I
just thought, "Okay, what do I do?"
this incredible love engulfed me.
And it was like those
cartoons, you know,
with the blurb [spelled
phonetically], like a balloon.
Suddenly, all the fear left me,
and I think it was the first time
in my life that I ever felt totally,
absolutely free of
fear, and it left me.
And there was no panic, and there
was an incredible lightness,
and the monster tried to touch me,
and because I was not harboring
fear, the monster just went right
through and could not
touch me at all.
So I carried that dream back through
the many layers between that place
and here, and this is
one of my first poems.
And I'll end with this
before the questions.
I release you, my beautiful
and terrible fear.
I release you.
You are my beloved and hated twin,
but now I don't know you as myself.
I release you with all
the pain I would know
at the death of my children.
You are not my blood anymore.
I give you back to the soldiers
who burned down my home,
beheaded my children, raped and
sodomized my brothers and sisters.
I give you back to
those who stole the food
from our plates when
we were starving.
I release you, fear, because you
hold these scenes in front of me
and I was born with eyes
that can never close.
I release you.
I release you.
I release you.
I release you.
I am not afraid to be angry.
I am not afraid to rejoice.
I am not afraid to be black.
I am not afraid to be white.
I am not afraid to be hungry.
I am not afraid to be full.
I am not afraid to be hated.
I am not afraid to be loved,
to be loved, to be loved.
Fear. Oh, you have choked
me, but I gave you the leash.
You have gutted me, but
I gave you the knife.
You have devoured me, but I
laid myself across the fire.
I take myself back, fear.
You are not my shadow any longer.
I won't hold you in my hands.
You can't live in my eyes,
my ears, my voice, my belly,
or in my heart, my heart, my heart.
But come here, fear.
I am alive and you are
so afraid of dying.
[applause] Okay, questions?
[laughs] She has a question.
[laughs] Anna has a
question over here.
I guess not.
Okay. Oh, that's right,
there's a microphone here.
Well, that will stop
a lot of questions.
[laughs] Female Speaker: Was
your name included in the book
of the Cherokees, or do
you claim it on your own?
Joy Harjo: Is my book
-- my name included?
Well, my mother's grandparents
came over on the Trail of Tears.
I have a pot that the U.S.
government gave her that they gave
to all Cherokees before they
moved, but -- Female Speaker: I --
Joy Harjo: -- we don't
-- I'm not on her --
I re-enrolled with
my father's tribe.
Female Speaker: Okay, you know,
many people where I'm from,
which is near the nation
of Cherokees,
many people know they're
part Cherokee,
but if they did not get their
name written down at the time
that there was a closure, they
listed all the Cherokees in a book.
Joy Harjo: Yeah, I
have relatives listed
at the -- Female Speaker: You do?
Okay. Joy Harjo: -- removal.
[affirmative] Female
Speaker: Thank you.
Joy Harjo: Thanks.
Female Speaker: Hi.
Thank -- Joy Harjo: Hi.
Female speaker: -- you
for being here today.
I'm very happy to see you.
I've been following
you for a long time.
I think it's interesting
that you went from art,
and you said you were
going to major in painting,
and then you went to poetry.
So I'm interested in what it is
about -- so you went to like,
self-expression creativity,
but what is it
that drew you specifically towards
-- and what, I think, words --
in reading your work, words for
you is something that's power.
I think it's a way that -- it's
something that is empowering.
I've -- specifically
[unintelligible] the context
of female native writers
reinventing the enemy's language.
Joy Harjo: [affirmative]
Female Speaker:
But what you feel personally
for you, why you went from art
and the context of painting
to words specifically.
Joy Harjo: Because I
needed to know words.
I was the -- always sat
in the back of the class.
They sent notes home
because I wouldn't speak,
and I always signed all the notes.
They didn't know that
because I was the oldest child
and my mother worked
three or four jobs.
But I think part of it and
why the spirit of poetry came
to me was because I needed to.
It picked me, and I
feel like the words --
it's very interesting with this -- I
think every gift has its own spirit,
and they're very demanding.
Just like the music, I mean,
my poetry spirit is
part of my saxophone.
My saxophone is kind of known for
its tone, and it's the same voice.
And actually, I came to
poetry through music first,
with my mother writing
songs and singing,
but the words carry --
the words aren't mine.
I take care of the words.
I take care of that spirit.
I read, I study, you know, like
anyone else with an art form,
and listen, but I have found that if
I have to stay within the parameters
of my gift -- and I've tried to
write really cool or outside of it,
or do a little hip-hop thing, my
poetry gift stands there and says --
[waves hands] -- you know?
This is what you're -- this is the
voice, and so I take care of it.
But, yeah, like that spirit
of creativity comes
through, I add to it.
It comes through with a filter
of who I am here right and now,
and my role as part of this
generation is part of being a member
of the Muscogee Creek
nation who is in the country
of America and speaking in a world.
I mean, I travel a
lot about the world,
and so I feel like the
words are coming through.
They don't belong to me, but they
are, and I think that words --
and what's important about poetry
is they remind us of the source
of ourselves, is that poetry was
first meant to -- the words create.
Words are -- create a force and they
create the atmosphere around us.
They create our path, where we're
going, you know, as individuals,
as a country, as earth,
as citizens of earth.
They are powerful and
they carry words.
And Scott Momaday had
a wonderful passage in,
was it "A Way to Rainy
Mountain," about --
or, no, it was another article he
did about how words have power,
and what's happening in a culture
where there's a proliferation
of words and they become
meaningless, almost like text
where text aren't -- I guess you can
write poetic text, but the impetus
and the time -- there's not
enough time to be in poetry.
Female Speaker: [affirmative]
Joy Harjo: Except there are a lot
of young poets coming up.
I just met several.
There's some of them here,
young poets who are part of --
they're national poets
who are young people on --
there were over 200,000 entries.
And poetry carries the spirit.
Poetry carries the spirit of us.
It carries the soul.
Poetry carries the soul
of words, of human beings.
But thank you for your question.
Female Speaker: Thank you.
Female Speaker: Hi.
Joy Harjo: Hi.
Female Speaker: I just wondered
if you could say a little bit
about how the creative
process is different
in all the different
expressions that you do.
Like, how you approach, say,
creating a poem versus a memoir,
or your prose pieces, or
your paintings, or songs.
Like, how that's different.
Joy Harjo: Yeah, poetry
and songs are similar.
Sometimes I write -- I take
poetry and turn it into songs.
Now when I used to perform with
Poetic Justice, I did spoken,
and so then I just kept -- but then
I would still the song forms were
different, and I used to get --
me and my co-writer would
get into these big fights
because he was like, reggae man,
and everything, [laughs], you know,
had to be in these certain forms,
and then my poems wouldn't
fit those.
But then we both started
working together,
and then when I started
singing, that changed it some,
but a lot of the poems
fit right into --
they're lyrical, and
they fit right into it.
Memoir is different, even though
I'm still a language person.
And -- but you still
have a trajectory.
I mean, there's trajectory
in everything.
There's architecture in everything,
but there's still a trajectory
from -- so it's a little different.
I don't know.
And then saxophone, you've
got to -- it's music.
It's hard to say all
at once right here,
but [laughs] they fit together.
I make them fit together
in my mind, or I'd go nuts
with doing so many things.
Thank you.
Female Speaker: [inaudible]
Female Speaker: Yeah.
Okay, there you go, yeah.
Female Speaker: On the gathering
that's happening at the base
of the capital right
now is the Aryan nation,
the white supremacist group, and
I'm just -- with your heritage,
I was wondering what you
would say to them or any kind
of comment you would make.
Joy Harjo: Well, I don't know that I
need to make a comment because my --
[applause] -- because anything
I would say they wouldn't hear,
I mean, why would I speak to --
you only speak to people
that want to listen.
Otherwise, you're wasting your
energy, and all that we can do is
to not engage -- I think we
need to take care of, you know,
take care of the vision --
of a vision that is inclusive
and a vision that's based in what
we call the Muscogee Creek nation
[Muscogee Creek], which
is "an inclusiveness
with love and compassion.
And anything outside of
that will destroy itself.
Thank you.
[applause] Female Speaker: Hello.
Hello. Joy Harjo: This is one of
the poets of the -- what is it?
The student poets?
What is it?
Female Speaker: National
Student Poets Program.
Joy Harjo: Yeah, National Student
Poets Program, so look that up.
I didn't even know about
it until this morning.
Female Speaker: I was wondering
what you most enjoy painting
and what parallels that
has with your poetry.
Joy Harjo: Okay, yeah,
what I enjoy painting.
A lot of it was kind of abstract --
were abstractions and landscape
stuff, which has come over to --
I do a lot of photography.
A lot of it's on my Facebook, and
I've had people buy photographs
from it, and it's kind of switched
over to that, I don't know,
but it's, you know, a
lot of it's abstract.
There's a lot of abstractions
in the poetry.
It's like, "What do you find
when you go beyond image?"
You know, images are so powerful
and yet they're very loaded.
They're loaded with history, they're
loaded with certain sounds or songs,
and that's what always
intrigues me about poetry.
I come to poetry because I
want to get beyond words.
[laughs] The saxophone
helps, but [laughs].
Female Speaker: You seem to
like to kind of find collisions
between all the different
senses in your art.
Joy Harjo: Yeah, there are a lot of
collisions going on, but, you know,
that's what -- that's
how we grow culture.
Cultures are like bio-energetic
systems, you know,
and if they're open and
if they're living culture,
there's this flow going
like this, you know.
Your mind is a kind
of culture, you know?
The heart, you know -- and
if there's a flow going,
that's really cool and that
means listening to other poets.
Listening to a poet out of, you
know, Iran, and being moved by them
and their listening and so on, and
our Bob Marley and John Coltrane.
[laughs] And so I see a poem,
like, of listening field like that,
but also that's what
intrigues be about art,
and when cultures shut down, we
know -- I have two minutes left.
When cultures shut down,
that is when we see there's a
stultification that goes on.
But it's often the poets and
the artists who come up through
that to make sure that we live
because we all want to live.
Even cultures are living
beings and want to live.
Thank you.
Female Speaker: Thank you.
[applause] Female Speaker: I'm
a college student learning,
or trying to learn more about
the Native-American culture,
and I was wondering what has it
been like growing up as an Indian
and what kind of hardships have
you faced being Native American.
Joy Harjo: You have
to read the book.
[laughs] She was asking about what
I faced being a Native-American,
but what I want to say is
that there's no such thing
as Native-American
or American-Indian.
We are different tribes.
In this country, we're
over 500 different tribes,
and we're as different from
each other as the Germans are
from the English from the French.
And a lot of our experiences
are different according
to the places we live.
So it can be -- and then there's
the experience of colonization
and Indian school, but a lot
of us go through those things.
I mean, I have Indian
school stories in here, too,
and I went to an incredible
Indian school with native artists
who were teaching, and major native
and non-native artists teaching,
but there was also the Bureau
of Indian Affairs system.
So that was quite a collision,
where we weren't supposed
to speak our tribal languages,
even in the late 60s, and yet we --
a lot of major artists
came out of that.
So I think it's a lot -- you
know, I can speak for myself,
there's a lot of maneuvering
and learning how
to maintain an integrity -- cultural
integrity, and yet, you know, share,
and be part of growing
something unique,
and exciting, and new,
as artists do.
Female Speaker: Do you think
you would have the same spirit
if you weren't Native-American?
Joy Harjo: I'm just who I am.
I don't know what my spirit
would be otherwise, you know?
The spirit is comprised
of many things.
Female Speaker: Thanks.
Joy Harjo: Thank you.
[applause] Okay, I
guess maybe one --
I think we're just
going to have time
for one more, but [unintelligible].
Cormia Dennis [spelled
phonetically]: Hello,
my name is Cormia Dennis, and
I also am a spoken-word artist
and I also do poetry,
and my question is,
how do you first get published?
Joy Harjo: How did I
first get published?
In student magazines at the
University of New Mexico
when I was an undergraduate.
Cormia Dennis: Okay.
Joy Harjo: And it's
probably different now.
Now, there's a lot of
Internet magazines.
Cormia Dennis: [affirmative]
Joy Harjo:
And in a lot of self-publishing use
to it -- used to be looked upon,
you know, as, you know,
you're publishing
because you can't publish anywhere
else, but that's not the truth.
A lot of people have taken
publishing into their own hands --
Cormia Dennis: [affirmative] Joy
Harjo: -- and published themselves.
Yeah. Cormia Dennis: How
long have you been writing?
Joy Harjo: I've been writing
since my 20's -- my mid 20's.
I was a late starter with poetry.
Most people I know have been writing
-- okay, I've got to stop now.
[laughter] Okay, most people
have been writing forever,
but I didn't start learning
writing until I was in my mid-20s,
and then I picked up the
saxophone when I turned 40.
Cormia Dennis: Thank you.
[applause] Female Speaker:
This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.
[end of transcript]