Quotes from Joy Harjo

That was struggle enough; however, there was another plane of consciousness on which I was fighting every night that I lay down to rest. As I slid into the borderlands between waking and sleeping, negative beings attempted to pull me into their darkness. I learned to escape them by using words to make a ladder to bring me back.

Through her eyes I came to see that all is spiritual and we either move about respectfully within it, or we are lost.

Emerging from a story, a poem, the Earth, a time in history, or from the body of our mothers is sometimes explosive, chaotic, frightening, yet always awe-inspiring and humbling. We can use the energy to create fresh structures, or we can destroy or be destroyed. The energy can have power over us or empower us, and even what is destructive might clear the debris so that fresh life can emerge from embers or ashes.

Within a few generations we had gone from being nearly one hundred percent of the population of this continent to less than one-half of one percent. We were all haunted.

We get frantic in our loving. The distance between Santa Fe and Albuquerque shifts and changes. It is moments; it is years. I am next to you in skin and blood and then I am not. I tremble and grasp at the edges of myself; I let go into you.

Don't forget: hold somebody's hand through the dark.

The Poem I Just Wrote The poem I just wrote is not real. And neither is the black horse who is grazing on my belly. And neither are the ghosts of old lovers who smile at me from the jukebox.

When I began to listen to poetry, it's when I began to listen to the stones, and I began to listen to what the clouds had to say, and I began to listen to others. And I think, most importantly for all of us, then you begin to learn to listen to the soul, the soul of yourself in here, which is also the soul of everyone else. —Joy Harjo

When she broke on Earth, the light in her was not broken. We cannot break light, nor can we destroy it.

When the world as as knew it ended, we stood up again in the ruin, and found a way to keep walking through tears.

She had some horses. She had some horses she loved. She had some horses she hated. These were the same horses.

Nothing ever stays the same, whether it be poems or humans.

Do not feed the monsters. Some are wandering thought forms, looking for a place to set up house. Some are sent to you deliberately. They come from arrows of gossip, jealousy or envy--and inadvertently from thoughtlessness. They feed on your attention, and feast on your fear.

I lay my body down in another city, another hotel room. Once Louis Armstrong and his band stayed here. Later the hotel fell to trash. New money resurrected it. Under the red moon of justice, I dream with the king of jazz.

Every collection of poetry makes a force field of energy. When creating you give yourself over to it. In the fiercest moments of imagination the artist may not know where they are going, the how and when of it, and it doesn't matter. What matters is the process regenerates and meaning shifts at every turn.

When a despot ineptly sought to turn a country to a totalitarian nightmare, where was poetry? It wasn't sleeping. It kept the poets up at night. We wrote against despair toward beauty, toward a truth that could imprison us for making liars out of the fools deposited in the seats of power, kept there by puppets who kneeled in piles of promissory notes.

Girl-Warrior was lonely For the poetry-talk of the Old Ones. They spoke in metaphor, A way of language that alerted her imagination To the presence of mystery Where there was always a light on in the mica windows Of her soul's house Where knowledge did not depend on words Of faulty human languages.

We must take care to feed the minds, hearts, and spirits of those coming up behind us--to offer songs, poems, and stories that will break open that which is hardened, expose that which is evil-minded or would harm, and remind us how we are constructed to bring forth beauty of thought and beingness.

Breath is our entrance into story making—it is a promise. It is a constant ritual that we all share, and it is essential in poetry.-Joy Harjo

Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

European and American settlers soon took over the lands that were established for settlement of eastern tribes in what became known as Indian Territory. The Christian god gave them authority. Yet everyone wanted the same thing: land, peace, a place to make a home, cook, fall in love, make children and music.

I have forgotten the reason, forgive me. I have forgotten my name in the language I was born to, forgive me.

But what captured him was a light in the river folding open and open blood, heart and stones shimmering like the Milky Way.

I grow tired of the heartache Of every small and large war Passed from generation To generation. But it is not in me to give up. I was taught to give honor to the house of the warriors Which cannot exist without the house of the peacemakers.