14 Quotes & Sayings By Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo is a poet, playwright, and activist. Joy’s writing has been published in the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and the New Yorker, among many other places. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. In 2013 she was selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists Read more

Her poetry has been performed at theaters from New York to The Hague. Harjo’s essays have appeared in Granta, The Nation, The Guardian, and many other newspapers and magazines. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband.

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Bless the poets, the workers for justice, the dancers of ceremony, the singers of heartache, the visionaries, all makers and carriers of fresh meaning– We will all make it through, despite politics and wars, despite failures and misunderstandings. There is only love. Joy Harjo
There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.
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There is no poetry where there are no mistakes. Joy Harjo
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To pray you open your whole self To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon To one whole voice that is you And know there is more That you can't see, can't hear Can't know except in moments Steadly growing, and in languages That aren't always sound but other Circles of motion. Like eagle that Sunday morning Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky In wind, swept our hearts clean With sacred wings. We see you, see ourselves and know That we must take the utmost care And kindness in all things. Breathe in, knowing we are made of All this, and breathe, knowing We are truly blessed because we Were born, and die soon within a True circle of motion, Like eagle rounding out the morning Inside us. We pray that it will be done In beauty. In beauty. . Joy Harjo
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A panther poised in the cypress tree about to jump is apanther poised in a cypress tree about to jump. The panther is a poem of fire green eyes and a heart chargedby four winds of four directions. The panther hears everything in the dark: the unspokentears of a few hundred human years, storms that will breakwhat has broken his world, a bluebird swaying on a branch afew miles away. He hears the death song of his approaching. Joy Harjo
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I wanted to see everything. It was around the time I acquired language, or even before that time, when something happened that changed my relationship to the spin of the world. My concept of language, of what was possible with music was changed by this revelatory moment. It changed even the way I look at the sun. Joy Harjo
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She had horses who were the blue air of the sky. Joy Harjo
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I walk in and out of several worlds every day. Joy Harjo
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All acts of kindness are lights in the war for justice. Joy Harjo
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I could hear my abandoned dreams making a racket in my soul. Joy Harjo
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Remember that you are all people and that all people are you. Joy Harjo
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When you play a sax, that saxophone is irreverent. It's noisy; it's a trickster... you cannot hide the saxophone in your hands, so it's a good teacher. Joy Harjo
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I don't see the desert as barren at all; I see it as full and ripe. It doesn't need to be flattered with rain. It certainly needs rain, but it does with what it has, and creates amazing beauty. Joy Harjo
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The creative act amazes me. Whether it's poetry, whether it's music, it's an amazing process, and it has something to do with bringing forth the old out into the world to create and to bring forth that which will rejuvenate. Joy Harjo