With Midori and I both down with winter illnesses (*cough* *cough*), we owe you a belated Sunday Poem, and a Monday Video too. Both are from poet, fiction writer, and musician Joy Harjo.
The poem is "A Map to the Next World," a deeply mythic piece which draws on the sacred stories of Harjo's Muskogee Creek heritage.
The video is of Harjo reading her work as part of An Evening with Native American Women Writers in Berkeley back in 1997.
Joy was born in Oklahoma, earned an MFA at the University of Iowa, and has taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Arizona State University, the University of Colorado, and the University of New Mexico. She currently lives in Hawaii. She has published many collections (How We Became Human, A Map to the Next World, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, etc.), won numerous awards, and performs with the band Poetic Justice. Visit Joy's website & blog for a list of her books, her CDs, and the films she is in. She also has a MySpace page where you can hear some of her music.
"I agree with Gide," Joy says, "that most of what is created is beyond us, is from that source of utter creation, the Creator, or God. We are technicians here on Earth, but also co-creators. I'm still amazed. And I still say, after writing poetry for all this time, and now music, that ultimately humans have a small hand in it. We serve it. We have to put ourselves in the way of it, and get out of the way of ourselves. And we have to hone our craft so that the form in which we hold our poems, our songs in attracts the best."
Thanks for that quote! "We are technicians here on Earth, but also co-creators. I'm still amazed.... We serve it. We have to put ourselves in the way of it, and get out of the way of ourselves." Very in vein with my own beliefs and convictions about art, but said far more beautifully and compellingly than I could.
Terri & Midori, get well soon!
Do you know Barbara Duncan's book, _Living Stories of the Cherokee_? A very responsible and yet creative transcription of current storytelling in Cherokee, North Carolina:
http://www.amazon.com/Living-Stories-Cherokee-Barbara-Duncan/dp/0807847194/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201047428&sr=1-1
Love the poem you linked to:
"My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged
from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens."
Posted by: Dante's Heart | January 22, 2008 at 05:18 PM