Quotes from Joy Harjo

The most powerful poetry is birthed through cracks in history, through what is broken and unseen.

But you must have grown out of a thousand years dreaming just like I could never imagine you. You must have broke open from another sky to here, because now I see you as a part of the millions of other universes that I thought could never occur in this breathing. And I know you as myself, traveling. In your eyes alone are many colonies of stars and other circling planet motion.

History will always find you, and wrap you In its thousand arms.

My heart is taken by you and these mornings since I am a horse running towards a cracked sky where there are countless dawns breaking simultaneously. There are two moons on the horizon and for you I have broken loose.

But come here, fear I am alive and you are so afraid of dying

These are the ice horses, horses who entered through your head, and then your heart, your beaten heart. These are the ones who loved you. They are the horses who have held you so close that you have become a part of them, an ice horse galloping into fire.

All those you thought you lost now circle you And you are free of pain and heartbreak. Don't look back, keep going. We will carry your memory here, until we join you In just a little while, in one blink of star time.

Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the thieves of time. Do not hold regrets.

Until the passage of the Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978, it was illegal for Native citizens to practice our cultures. This included the making and sharing of songs and stories. Songs and stories in one culture are poetry and prose in another. They are intrinsic to cultural sovereignty. To write or create as a Native person was essentially illegal.

The woman hangs from the 13th floor window crying for the lost beauty of her own life. She sees the sun falling west over the grey plane of Chicago. She thinks she remembers listening to her own life break loose, as she falls from the 13th floor window on the east side of Chicago, or as she climbs back up to claim herself again.

It was impossible to make it through the tragedy Without poetry. What are we without winds becoming words?

My children were slick otters of joy in these rough waters of living

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

This is my heart. It is a good heart. Weaves a membrane of mist and fire. When we speak love in the flower world My heart is close enough to sing to you in a language too clumsy for human words.

I had come this far without the elegance of speech. ... I could not speak coherently. I stuttered in my mind. I could not express my perception of the sacred. I could speak everyday language: Please pass the salt. I would like . . . When are we going . . . I'll meet you there. I wanted the intricate and metaphorical language of my ancestors to pass through my language, my life.

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.

something echoes all forgotten dreams

Poetry (and other forms of writing) can be useful as a tool for finding the way into or through the dark. Or a device with which to admire the complexity of the stories in which we have become entangled. Sometimes the only way out is by voice, following the music into the impossible.

The traditional ways and rituals of all of Earth's peoples are kept in containers of poetry, song, and story. It is how we know who we are, where we are coming from and who we are becoming.

Maybe it is the thunders who breathed life into my body. They are forever wanting to lift me high and carry me away. -Prodigal Daughters (Kimberly Wesnaut)

You took me once to an older part of earth I'd never seen— where monsters were born and killed. They sacrificed everything and nothing for a taste of this life.

It was all connected, this poetics of listening, word making, and dancing. There was power to transform, to lighten the heaviness of the burden of being human. That's how I came to understand the power of poetry and music. It was a tool, but more than a tool. Words and music evoked a state of mind that lifted us up when racial and historical despair threatened.

We cannot own anyone else, people, the lands, or resources. We are here to care for each other.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you. Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them.