How We Became Human PA

This collection gathers poems from throughout Joy Harjo's twenty-eight-year career, beginning in 1973 in the age marked by the takeover at Wounded Knee and the rejuvenation of indigenous cultures in the world through poetry and music. How We Became Human explores its title question in poems of sustaining grace.

Acknowledgments

xv

Introduction

xvii

from The Last Song, 1975, Puerto del Sol Press, Chapbook No. 1

Watching Crow, Looking South Toward the Manzano Mountains

3

(1)

for a hopi silversmith

4

(1)

San Juan Pueblo and South Dakota Are 800 Miles Away on a Map

5

(1)

he told me his name was sitting bull

6

(2)

3 A.M.

8

(1)

the last song

9

(1)

Are You Still There?

10

(1)

Conversations Between Here and Home

11

(4)

from What Moon Drove Me to This?, 1979, I. Reed Books

Four Horse Songs

15

(2)

I Am a Dangerous Woman

17

(1)

There Was a Dance, Sweetheart

18

(2)

Crossing the Border

20

(2)

Someone Talking

22

(3)

Fire

25

(4)

from She Had Some Horses, 1983, Thunder's Mouth Press

Call It Fear

29

(2)

Anchorage

31

(2)

For Alva Benson, and for Those Who Have Learned to Speak

33

(2)

The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window

35

(3)

White Bear

38

(2)

Skeleton of Winter

40

(2)

Remember

42

(1)

New Orleans

43

(4)

She Had Some Horses

47

(3)

I Give You Back

50

(5)

from Secrets from the Center of the World, 1989, University of Arizona Press

My House Is the Red Earth

55

(1)

If You Look with the Mind of the Swirling Earth

56

(1)

If All Events Are Related

57

(1)

This Land Is a Poem

58

(1)

Anything That Matters

59

(1)

Invisible Fish

60

(1)

Don't Bother the Earth Spirit

61

(1)

It Is an Honor

62

(3)

from In Mad Love and War, 1990, Wesleyan University Press

Grace

65

(2)

Deer Dancer

67

(3)

For Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Whose Spirit Is Present Here and in the Dappled Stars

70

(2)

Trickster

72

(1)

Bird

73

(2)

The Real Revolution Is Love

75

(3)

Song for the Deer and Myself to Return On

78

(1)

Rainy Dawn

79

(1)

Santa Fe

80

(1)

Desire

81

(1)

The Book of Myths

82

(2)

Transformations

84

(1)

Eagle Poem

85

(4)

from The Woman Who Fell from the Sky, 1994, W. W. Norton

Reconciliation, a Prayer

89

(2)

The Creation Story

91

(2)

The Woman Who Fell from the Sky

93

(7)

The Flood

100

(4)

A Postcolonial Tale

104

(2)

The Myth of Blackbirds

106

(2)

The Song of the House in the House

108

(2)

Letter from the End of the Twentieth Century

110

(3)

Promise of Blue Horses

113

(1)

The Place the Musician Became a Bear

114

(2)

Fishing

116

(2)

Promise

118

(2)

The Dawn Appears with Butterflies

120

(3)

Perhaps the World Ends Here

123

(4)

from A Map to the Next World: Poems and Tales, 2000, W. W. Norton

Songline of Dawn

127

(2)

A Map to the Next World

129

(4)

The End

133

(3)

Emergence

136

(2)

Songs from the House of Death, or How to Make It Through to the End of a Relationship

138

(3)

The Path to the Milky Way Leads Through Los Angeles

141

(2)

The Power of Never

143

(3)

Hold Up

146

(3)

Returning from the Enemy

149

(16)

The Ceremony

165

(2)

This Is My Heart

167

(2)

Protocol

169

(2)

Morning Song

171

(4)

New Poems, 1999--2001

In Praise of Earth

175

(2)

Letter (with songline) to the Breathmaker

177

(2)

I Am Not Ready to Die Yet

179

(2)

Naming

181

(1)

Faith

182

(2)

Equinox

184

(1)

Ah, Ah

185

(1)

Morning Prayers

186

(2)

The Everlasting

188

(4)

And If I Awaken in Los Angeles

192

(2)

It's Raining in Honolulu

194

(1)

Rushing the Pali

195

(3)

When the World as We Knew It Ended

198

(3)

Notes

201

(36)

Index

237

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How We Became Human PA

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Table of Contents

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