Joy Harjo Poem Analysis Paper

Ilona Willsey

English 11 Honors

Mrs. Drexler

Poetry Analysis Paper

One of the most distinguished, contemporary poets in America today is Joy Harjo. Born in 1951 in Oklahoma and a member of the Creek (Mvskoke) Nation, her work is deeply influenced by her American Indian roots and upbringing. She has won numerous awards and has published a fair amount of poetry books as well as a memoir, Crazy Brave published in 2012. She is currently a professor of English and American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In 2014, Harjo has been named a Guggenheim Fellow, a prestigious award to further the development of scholars and artists. She is planning to use the award funds to complete her second memoir, Songline of Justice.

The subject matter within the poem revolves around fertility and the life of women as mothers, caretakers and providers. For example, Harjo relates a kitchen table to the center of life. Intimately connected with life is food (on the table) without which life is not sustainable. She says, “The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.” The first thing mothers do after the baby is born, is to feed it milk from their own bodies. This is an intensely feminine act of giving and sustaining life. Later, rather than giving food from her body, the mother prepares food and nourishes her family at the table. Another expression of the “life goes on theme,” is expressed in the poem When the World As We Knew It Ended. “But then there were seeds to plant and the babies who needed milk and comforting, and someone picked up a guitar or ukulele from the rubble and began to sing about the light flutter the kick beneath the skin of the earth we felt there, beneath us.” This poem speaks about the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, now known as 9/11. Too much greed, “raping” the Earth wanting too much from her will eventually backfire. But even the terrible event of a figurative rape, brings new life; in this poem, when the world as one knows it (whether exterior, or interior) gets destroyed, new (and tender) life always will prevail; in seeds, in babies, in the

Her poetry is full with such references, evoking ancestors, images of the sacred nature of the natural surroundings and the symbolic meanings of animals, such as eagles and deer. In her poem “Eagle Poem”, Hajo expresses that there is more to the world than the naked eye sees and that it must be felt and cannot necessarily be comprehended by the mind alone. Again, this is a reference to ecofeminism, connecting the natural world with the experience of the heart (more feminine) rather than abstract logic (more masculine). These classifications are not necessarily to be viewed as rigid, but are more symbolic. Both male and female have the eagle inside them, and the potential to live a life of beauty and wonder while respecting nature and each other, “Like eagle rounding out the morning Inside us. We pray that it will be done In beauty. In