Poet Warrior
by
89/99
Critics' Rating Index
94/99
Readers' Rating Index
85/99
Scholars' Citation Index
66/99
Volume of Reviews
70/99
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About This Book
Three-term poet laureate Joy Harjo offers a vivid, lyrical, and inspiring call for love and justice in this contemplation of her trailblazing life. Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as US poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic, and wise follow-up to Crazy Brave, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice. Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child, and the messengers of a changing earth - owls heralding grief, resilient desert plants, and a smooth green snake curled up in surprise. She celebrates the influences that shaped her poetry, among them Audre Lorde, N. Scott Momaday, Walt Whitman, Muscogee stomp dance call-and-response, Navajo horse songs, rain, and sunrise. In absorbing, incantatory prose, Harjo grieves at the loss of her mother, reckons with the theft of her ancestral homeland, and sheds light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife, and community member. Moving fluidly between prose, song, and poetry, Harjo recounts a luminous journey of becoming, a spiritual map that will help us all find home. Poet Warrior sings with the jazz, blues, tenderness, and bravery that we know as distinctly Joy Harjo.
Reviews
"Continually eliding the material and the ethereal, the political and the mystical, the poetry of words and the poetry of action, Harjo ends this iteration of her life story with a journey down the Amazon, a sighting of pink dolphins, and in the final pages, her mother's death."
"The simplicity with which Harjo writes about deep things makes this a beautiful book."
"A gorgeous, compassionate memoir from one of America's greatest living writers."
"This mesmerizing story is a pleasure to get lost in."
"Throughout this lyrical, beautiful memoir Harjo generously shares her inspirations: family, nature, ritual, music, literature, her life lessons and insights gleaned from her dreams, psychic intuitions, and communications with ancestors."
"This poignant read offers a lot of food for thought."
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