MPR’s Beth Friend interviews Native American poet Joy Harjo, who discusses language, the Earth, and Western reality. Segment includes Harjo reading her poetry.

Transcript:

(00:00:00) I'm always aware of the need of a denser language or a different language. And I think that's one reason
(00:00:07) I came to writing poetry because I find the English language is really a language that was created for analyzation. But if you want to talk about things of the spirit or things that are of the
(00:00:20) sake what I call the Sacred Space or of Dreamtime or so on, you know, oftentimes English just doesn't do it. So for me poetry becomes a way of curving and bending the language so that it can find its way into that kind of space. I wonder if you could talk to us about what you think. The relationship is between the mind the internal landscape and the land externally. Well, there's a reciprocal relationship that goes on there. I think
(00:00:52) humans in this sense of these last few industrialized centuries in on this continent
(00:00:57) have misplaced some You know, they become some idea of themselves within which they're separated from the really who they are which has to everything to do with the land everything that you eat comes from the land even if you go by it, you know supermarket and it's wrapped up in her package. I mean it there's a source there. There's a place it comes from and everything comes from the earth. Absolutely everything. You know, we're totally depended on it. But in this culture people are not taught, you know the connection to the land which has everything to do with who they are as human beings. This Western reality is very human Centric and it's a false premise that people operate under
(00:01:46) well in your poetry. There's a very
(00:01:49) strong prevalence of animals in that kind of spirit and more of a connection between the human and the animal as being From one energy and one place. Why don't you read the poem this wonderful poem that's in the new collection in Mad Love and War. It's called dear dancer. Okay.
(00:02:08) Yeah, this is a poem that came from the North
(00:02:10) country. And it happened. It was a story that my brother told me that
(00:02:16) happened in a bar somewhere up in this
(00:02:19) area. I'll just read it called dear dancer
(00:02:24) nearly. Everyone had left that bar in the middle of winter
(00:02:27) except the hardcore.
(00:02:29) It was the coldest night of the year every place shut down, but not us. Of course. We noticed when she came in. We were Indian ruins. She was the end of beauty. No one knew. Her The Stranger whose tribe we recognized her family related to Dear if that's who she was a people accustomed to hearing songs and pine trees and making them Hearts The woman Inside the woman who is to dance naked in the bar of Misfits blue, dear. Magic Henry Jack who cannot survive a sober Day thought she was Buffalo Calf Woman. Come back passed out his head by the toilet all night. He Dreamed a Dream. He couldn't say the next day. He borrowed money went home and sent back the money. I lent now.
(00:03:17) That's a miracle
(00:03:19) some people see Vision in a burn tortilla some in the face of a woman. This is the bar of broken survivors the club of shotgun knife wound of poisoned by culture. We who were taught not to stare drink our beer the players gossip down their cues. Someone put a quarter in the Jukebox to relive despair. Richard's wife Dove to kill her we had to hold her back empty her pockets of knives and diaper pins by her two beers to keep her
(00:03:51) still while Richard secretly bought the beauty a drink.
(00:03:55) How do I say it in this language? There are no
(00:03:58) words for how the real world collapses.
(00:04:02) I could say it in my own in the sacred mountains would come into Focus, but I couldn't take it in this dingy envelope. So I look at the stars and the strange city. Into the back of the sky the only promises that ever make
(00:04:15) sense
(00:04:16) my brother-in-law hung out with white people went to law school with a perfect record quit says you can keep
(00:04:22) your laws your words and practice law on the street with his hands.
(00:04:28) He Jimmy to the proverbial dream girl the face of the Moon while the players wrecked and you game bragged he told her magic words and that's when she broke became human, but we
(00:04:38) all heard his bar voice crack
(00:04:41) would A girl like you doing in a place like
(00:04:43) this. That's what I'd like to know. What are we all doing in a place like this?
(00:04:50) You would know she could hear only what she wanted to don't we all left the drink of betrayal Richard bought her at the bar. What was she on we all wanted some put a quarter in the I had to tell you this for the baby inside the girls sealed up with a lick of Hope and swimming into Praise of Nations. This is not a rooming house, but a dream of Winter Falls and the deer who portrayed the relatives of strangers the way back is dear breath on I see windows. The next dance none of us predicted. She borrowed a chair for The Stairway to Heaven and stood on a table of names and danced in the
(00:05:37) room of children without shoes.
(00:05:41) You picked a fine Time to Leave Me Lucille with for Hungry children in a crop in the field.
(00:05:48) And then she took off her clothes.
(00:05:50) She shook loose
(00:05:51) memory Waltz with the empty lover. We'd all become.
(00:05:56) She was the myth slipped down through Dreamtime. The promise of feast we all knew was coming the deer who crossed through knots of a curse to find us. She was no slouch and neither were we watching the music ended and so does the story I wasn't there but I imagined her like this not a stained red dress with tape on her heels, but the deer who entered our dream in white dawn breathe Mist into pine trees her. On a blessing of Meet the
(00:06:28) ancestors who never left. So he had animal and people moving in and out of each other's Spirits. There are also events that you want to remember and events that very much are tied into the political struggles of people there. I'm thinking of two poems in this new collection that maybe we can talk about one is a poem that is about an American Indian movement activists a young woman and Anime who was found murdered and then in Strange Fruit upon called Strange Fruit. You write about the lynching of a black woman Jacqueline Peters who was a civil rights activist. She who was lynched in California in June of 1986. What are you let's talk. Let's start specifically on the first one. I mentioned the poem for anime.
(00:07:18) Yeah, that one was that was written to read at
(00:07:21) a at a gathering and you know after she had been killed it had been 10 years since she had been killed and said wrote it specifically for that. I think of her as someone with a huge heart. And in fact, she's I guess been called and you know Brave Hearted Woman, which is a title given to very few few women. And so I wrote this piece, you know, I wrote this piece for her to help everyone remember as I say in the beginning for we remember the story and must tell it again so we may all live So this is for anime pick to aquash whose spirit is present here and then the dappled Stars.
(00:08:02) Beneath The Sky blurred with mist and wind I am amazed as I watch The Violet heads of crocuses erupt from the stiff Earth after dying for his season as I have watched my own dark head appear each morning after entering the next World to come back to this one amazed. It is the way in the natural world to understand the place the ghost dancers named after the heartbreaking destruction anime everything and nothing changes. You are the Shimmer. Young woman who found her voice when you were warned to be silent or have your body cut away from you like an elegant weed. You are the one who spirit is present in the dappled Stars, they pranced and lope like colored horses who stay with us through the streets of these Steely cities and I have seen them nestling the frozen bodies of tattered drunks in the corner this morning when the last star is dimming and the buses grind toward the middle of the city. I know it is 10 years since they buried You the second time and Lakota in a language that could free you. I heard about it in Oklahoma or New Mexico how the wind held and pulled everything down in a righteous anger. It was the women who told me and we understood wordless Lee The Ripe meaning of your murder as I understand ten years later after the slowest changing of the seasons that we have just begun to touch the dazzling Whirlwind of our anger. We have just begun to perceive the amazed world the goes dancers entered crazily,
(00:09:33) beautifully The dazzling world one of our anger. That's something that you write out of
(00:09:42) I suppose. I mean I didn't think about it consciously,
(00:09:46) but then I go back and look at these and what I'm doing and I think as a creek
(00:09:53) person in any person in a woman and you know in a
(00:09:56) mixed blood etcetera, there's a lot of anger there. You know and and the Earth is angry. I mean there's a lot that we're dealing with here and it's a very powerful force is very powerful and I think Gandhi there's even a quote by Gandhi who talks about using anger as a transformative device.
(00:10:16) And if I'm doing anything in
(00:10:17) my work, I think what I'm trying to do is to use it as a transformative device whether it's anger or fear or anything else that has been destructive, you know to us. So we closed our conversation with another reading from secrets of the center of the world. Sure. You know, this one's my favorite in this
(00:10:37) book. Don't bother the Earth Spirit who lives here. She is working on a story. It is the oldest story in the world and it is delicate changing if she sees you watching she will invite you in for coffee give you warm bread and you will be obligated to stay and listen, but this is no ordinary story. You will have to endure earthquakes lightning the deaths of all those you love the most blinding Beauty. It's a story so compelling you may never want to leave. Leave this is how she traps you see that stone finger over there. That is the only one who ever
(00:11:16) escaped.