Harjo: A poet for this United States

The elevation of Joy Harjo as poet laureate for the United States is a moment to savor. Harjo became the first Native person singled out for such an honor, joining such luminaries as Robert Frost, Conrad Aiken, William Carlos Williams, Rita Dove, Juan Felipe Herrera and others. As poet laureate, she will lecture and read her poetry at the Library of Congress, introduce poets in the library’s annual poetry series and promote the appreciation of the form.

While Harjo is a native of Oklahoma and a member of the Muscogee Creek tribe (Native spelling, Mvskoke), we in New Mexico can claim her, too. In addition to attending the Institute of American Indian Arts, Harjo holds her bachelor’s degree from

the University of New Mexico and has a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa. She has taught at both IAIA and UNM, and many local residents remember fondly nights spent listening to Harjo’s music — she is an accomplished musician and songwriter.

The naming of Harjo comes during a particularly fine period for Native writers, with poet Layli Long Soldier having been a finalist for the National Book Award for her 2017 collection Whereas and novelist Tommy Orange’s 2018 debut, There, There named one of the best books of 2018 and a Pulitzer finalist. Harjo is the first to be honored as poet laureate, but she will not be the last.

Her work, lyrical and elemental in nature, incorporates the symbols and myths of indigenous peoples, the first inhabitants of this continent and country, a people too often forgotten by modern Americans. She says on her website: “I feel strongly that I have a responsibility to all the sources that I am: to all past and future ancestors, to my home country, to all places that I touch down on and that are myself, to all voices, all women, all of my tribe, all people, all earth, and beyond that to all beginnings and endings. In a strange kind of sense [writing] frees me to believe in myself, to be able to speak, to have voice, because I have to; it is my survival.”

Think of that: writing as survival, as a way to relay stories, to remind the contemporary world of ways of doing that otherwise would be lost. Writing as a way to remind the world that, yes, the people who were here when Europeans arrived are still here.

One of the more affirming reactions to the selection of Joy Harjo came from Native activist Suzan Harjo (Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee) on Facebook, reminding all of the deep well of Native literary achievement: “Everybody celebrate by reading at least one poem by one of our other fine Native poets,” naming such writers as Sherman Alexie, Sherwin Bitsui, Diane Burns, Heid Erdrich, Louise Erdrich, Lance Henson, Linda Hogan, Layli Long Soldier, Tiffany Midge, Scott Momaday, Alexander Posey, Buffy Sainte Marie, Luci Tapahonso, John Trudell, Richard Ray Whitman and Elizabeth Woody. And that was her starter list.

So it is a start by the nation to recognize the talent indigenous to this place and one that enriches our world.