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Joy Harjo

  • “it is frustrating to name someone or something when in / the real world all is in motion, in a state of change. / That's why there is a danger when you try to name with / one name what is many, has no sides and is round.”

    • Joy Harjo,
    • in Joseph Bruchac, ed., Songs From This Earth on Turtle's Back ()

  • “... poetry can work with the / language, manipulate it so that it can embrace those / concepts, visions, times and places that the language / in and of itself can't do.”

    • Joy Harjo,
    • in Joseph Bruchac, ed., Songs From This Earth on Turtle's Back ()

  • “This city is made of stone, of blood, and fish.”

    • Joy Harjo,
    • "Anchorage," in Joseph Bruchac, ed., Songs From This Earth on Turtle's Back ()

  • “Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.”

    • Joy Harjo,
    • "Remember," in Joseph Bruchac, ed., Songs From This Earth on Turtle's Back ()

  • “... this poem isn't for you / but for me / after all.”

    • Joy Harjo,
    • "Your Phone Call at Eight a.m.," in Rayna Green, ed., That's What She Said ()

  • “And knew he was one of the ones who yearned / for something his heart wasn't big enough / to handle.”

    • Joy Harjo,
    • "New Orleans," in Rayna Green, ed., That's What She Said ()

  • “All poets / understand the final uselessness of words. We are chords to / other chords to other chords, if we're lucky, to melody.”

    • Joy Harjo,
    • "Bird," In Mad Love and War ()

  • “... when you were born I held you wet and unfolding, like a butterfly newly born from the chrysalis of my body.”

    • Joy Harjo,
    • "Rainy Dawn," In Mad Love and War ()

  • “I have more questions than answers in this world as do most poets and writers. The field of memory we exist in is absolutely encompassing and is both a question and answer. It is memory that provides the heart with impetus, fuels the brain, and propels the corn plant from seed to fruit.”

    • Joy Harjo,
    • conference ()

  • “... I walk in and out of several worlds every day.”

    • Joy Harjo,
    • in Laura Coltelli, ed., Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak ()

  • “... I believe that poets have to be inside their poems somewhere, or the poem won't work.”

    • Joy Harjo,
    • in Laura Coltelli, ed., Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak ()

  • “The world begins at the kitchen table / ... Come to the table. / What do you bring to the table? / Let's put everything on the table. / ... / Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table / while we are laughing and crying and eating / the last sweet bite.”

    • Joy Harjo,
    • title poem, Perhaps the World Ends Here ()

  • “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.”

Joy Harjo, Creek-U.S. poet, writer, musician

(1951)