I am a member of the Muskogee people. I'm a poet, a musician, a dreamer of sorts, a questioner. Like everyone else, I'm looking for answers of some sort or the other.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a deep connection to identity and the search for meaning through creativity.
Joy Harjo emphasizes the importance of belonging to a community while also embodying various roles such as a poet, musician, and dreamer. This reflects the universal human experience of seeking answers in life through expression and introspection, highlighting the intersection of culture, art, and personal exploration.
In practice
In a poetry reading, one might say, 'As Joy Harjo expresses, I too am a poet and a questioner in search of meaning.'
It's important as a writer to do my art well and do it in a way that is powerful and beautiful and meaningful, so that my work regenerates the people, certainly Indian people, and the earth and the sun. And in that way we all continue forever.
A story matrix connects all of us._x000D_ There are rules, processes, and circles of responsibility in this world. And the story begins exactly where it is supposed to begin. We cannot skip any part.
You just go where poetry is, whether it's in your heart or your mind or in books or in places where there's live poetry or recordings.
Bottom line, I have to follow what my soul says, or my spirit. And my spirit said that poetry and the arts should be without borders, should be without political borders.
I don't like this romanticization of Indian people in which Indian people are looked at as spiritual saviors, as people who have always taken care of the land. We're human beings. But I think different cultures have developed different aspects of humanness.
Humans are vulnerable and rely on the kindnesses of the earth and the sun; we exist together in a sacred field of meaning.
Almost 70 years have gone by, and I've still got that feeling when I write... Writing, for me, is still it. It has always been the basis of everything I do. I'm a writer who performs, not a performer who writes. I love the act of writing. It's still a thrill for me.
Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.
I've never liked the word 'celebrity.' I like to photograph people who are good at what they do.
I think writer is a word without gender, and a good writer observes, absorbs, hopefully empathizes then translates that into character and story. You don’t have to do or be or have experienced, traveled to, but you have to imagine all of that, very well–and believe it completely during the bubble of the work.
I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practitioner will again strive to comprehend and control them.
After the last line of a poem, nothing follows except literary criticism.
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