Poet Warrior: A Memoir (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780393248524)

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as U.S. 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.

Author: Joy Harjo
ISBN-10: 0393248526
ISBN-13: 9780393248524
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Language: English
Published: 09/07/2021
Pages: 240
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.55h x 5.80w x 0.91d
Award: ALA Notable Books - Winner

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 05/01/2021 pg. 23
Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2021
Booklist 07/01/2021 pg. 14
Publishers Weekly 07/12/2021 pg. 57
Library Journal 09/01/2021 pg. 72