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Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo Quotes

Poet

Joy Harjo is an American Indian poet born on May 9, 1951. Her work blends poetry, music, and visual art, exploring Native American culture, identity, and the female experience. Harjo is known for her unique voice and profound emotional expression, and her poetry has won numerous literary awards.

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Famous Joy Harjo Quotes

“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.”

Poetry Sacrifice Ancient Monsters Ambiguous She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“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.”

Poetry Horse Description Mystical Imagery Majestic She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“A panther poised in the cypress tree about to jump is a panther poised in a cypress tree about to jump. The panther is a poem of fire green eyes and a heart charged by four winds of four directions. The panther hears everything in the dark: the unspoken tears of a few hundred human years, storms that will break what has broken his world, a bluebird swaying on a branch a few miles away. He hears the death song of his approaching prey: I will always love you, sunrise. I belong to the black cat with fire green eyes. There, in the cypress tree near the morning star.”

Spirit Poetry Humanity Nature Fire Awareness Elements Intelligence Eyes Cats Panthers Totems American Indian Mythology

Book:Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems

Source: Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems

“It hasn't always been this way, because glaciers who are ice ghosts create oceans, carve earth and shape this city here, by the sound. They swim backwards in time.”

Poetry Change Creation Evolution Mysterious She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“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.”

Writing Poetry Artist Creation Writing Process Introduction She Had Some Horses Jo Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“And we go on, keep giving birth and watch ourselves die, over and over. And the ground spinning beneath us goes on talking.”

Poetry Eternity Life And Death Reincarnation She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo Endless Cycle

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“her eyes closed against some unimagined darkness, where she is buried in an ache in which nothing makes sense.”

Poetry Suffering Inner Life She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo Inner Torment

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“Because who would believe the fantastic and terrible story of all of our survival those who were never meant to survive?”

Poetry Survival Story Unbelievable Survivors She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“You savored each story they told you, and remembered the way the stars entered your blood at birth.”

Stories Poetry Story Imagery She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“She sees Lake Michigan lapping at the shores of herself. It is a dizzy hole of water and the rich live in tall glass houses at the edge of it.”

Poetry Identity Description The Self She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“I thought my dance alone through worlds of odd and eccentric planets that no one else knew would sustain me.”

Poetry Space Planets Cosmic Traveler She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“I can't do anything but talk to the wind, to the moon but cry out goddamn goddamn to stones and to other deathless voices that I hope will carry us all through.”

Poetry She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“something echoes all forgotten dreams”

Poetry Dreams Echo She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“Untitled Either a snail's moist web of moonlight, or someone's hot breath at four a.m. when the night has been too much, has eaten you whole. This is my life. It has been sifted through the bones of my body, through blood. It is all that I have.”

Life Poetry She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo My Life All I Have

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“Or maybe you are my own life scheming desperately to climb back in.”

Poetry She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

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

Poetry Love And Hate She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“There are still ancient symbols alive”

Poetry Ancient Symbols She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“Sometimes it is like facing the dreamer who knows the you of blood and stars—”

Poetry Identity Dreamer The Self She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“There is a field of talking blood that I have not been able to reach, not even with knives, not yet.”

Poetry She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“I study and read poems and try to put myself in them.”

Poetry Reading Poems She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“Raw red cliffs that you stumbled down into your own shadow haven't kept you away, or soft red lights and strange electrical music that I play.”

Poetry Rhyming She Had Some Horses Warnings Joy Harjo Undeterred

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“I am always in danger.”

Poetry Danger Always She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo In Danger

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“But your half-grin is the only image that comes clear. All the words lead to that”

Poetry She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“Her escape is my own. I tell her, yes. Yes. We ride out for breath over the distance. Night air approaches, the galloping other-life. No sound. No sound.”

Poetry Night Supernatural She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“Some will not see them. But some will see the horses with their hearts of sleeping volcanoes and will be rocked awake past their bodies to see who they have become.”

Poetry Seeing Identity Evolution Awakening She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo Out Of Body

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“At sunset say goodbye to hurt, to suffering, goodbye to the pain you caused others. Good bye, bye, don't cry.”

Pain Poetry Suffering Hurt Poem Letting Go Bygones

Book:An American Sunrise

Source: An American Sunrise

“These are the ones who escape after the last hurt is turned inward; they are the most dangerous ones.”

Poetry Hurt Dangerous Escape She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“Was it sleep? Or the star-dancer come for her dance? There are stars who have names, who are dreams. There are stars who have families who are music. She thought she woke up.”

Poetry Stars Sleep Dreams She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo

Book:She Had Some Horses

Source: She Had Some Horses

“We will keep going despite dark Or a madman in a white house dream.”

Poetry Evil Darkness Poem Surviving Donald Trump Presidents

Book:An American Sunrise

Source: An American Sunrise

“Maybe then we will see the design of the two-minded creature And know why half the world fights righteously for greedy masters And the other half is nailing it all back together”

Poetry Evil Poem Activism Good Righteousness Good Vs Evil Right Vs Wrong

Author:Joy Harjo

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

Believe Poetry I Believe Poet

Book:The spiral of memory: interviews

Source: The spiral of memory: interviews

“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.”

Ifs Poetry Turns Answers Sadness Talent Noise Abandoned Drag Immense Gifted Turn-on Urgency Aptitude Sense Of Urgency Giftedness

Author:Joy Harjo

About the Author

Born: May 9, 1951
Known for: Poet
Quotes: 138

Related Topics

Poetry She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo Poem Life Death Loss Earth Heart Language Love Grief Imagery Mourning Stories Humanity Identity Poems Remember Stars

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

She Had Some HorsesRelated source material

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: PoemsRelated source material

An American SunriseRelated source material

Catching the LightRelated source material

In Mad Love and WarRelated source material

Crazy BraveRelated source material

How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2002Related source material

The spiral of memory: interviewsRelated source material

A Map to the Next World: Poems and TalesRelated source material

The Pueblo Imagination: Landscape and Memory in the Photography of Lee MarmonRelated source material

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