Poet Warrior

A Memoir

By: Joy Harjo

Narrated by: Joy Harjo

Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

National best seller

Three-term poet laureate Joy Harjo offers a vivid, lyrical, and inspiring call for love and justice in this contemplation of her trailblazing life.

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as US 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.

©2021 Joy Harjo (P)2021 Audible, Inc.

Majestic

A story rich with down to Earth cultural experiences of Joy Harjo. Her voice is filled with dreamy spiritual power ~ a wonderful oral history of her ancestors, her own life, and her descendants from her poetic perspective.

True Poet Warrior.

True Poet Spirit. True Poet Teacher. As Inspiring as Crazy Brave. Thank you Joy Harjo!

A'ho day baht haw Joy Harjo, take my thank you!

I love Joy Harjo! As a native woman living in a colonized world these kinds of books are vital for us in the process of decolonization

Its over already?

You know one of these fascinating books, that takes you so many wonderful places, and inspire you and you can listen to it just a tiny bit at a time because than you just are lead to write and when you hear the voice of the Audible guy, telling you it’s over you go, Oh no, it’s over already?! Can I have more?

Love Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo is one of my favorite poets of all time. It is incredibly powerful to hear her read her work in her voice so the listener can know how it was intended to be read.

Story Told with Heart

Amazingly deep and touchingly real as told by the poet, author herself. Helps me connect to my own roots and ancestors, and to my life’s journey.

Outstanding work

Moving, succinct, outstanding work. A credit to her people and the world. I love this book, and the authors voice is inviting to the ear.

Loved it!!!

Excellent story, excellent narration. Poet Warrior was funny, sad, and very educational. This is the first thing I've read by Joy Harjo. very much looking forward to reading more of her works.

Don’t know Joy Harjo? Start here. Bring tissues.

Before listening to Poet Warrior, I knew Harjo was the poet laureate, and I even watched her Masterclass, but I did not appreciate her until I heard her here. Her memoir covers more than her life story—it is the story of a poet first and foremost, with the story of an indigenous woman a close second. Expect to hear her poetic and life influences, the tender storytelling of generational trauma reflected in tranquility, and a refreshing dose of narrative history of the subjugation and oppression of native peoples in a way that meets the diversity requirements of the 21st century without tempering the Muse.

Of course Joy Harjo is a professional, but Poet Warrior attests that she is more than that. She is a saxophone mystic, truly, reminding us through crows’ feet eyes and a smile that the pen is still mightier than the sword.

A wonderful spiritual journey!

This is a book I will listen to again. Her descriptions of life's journey are written so elegantly as to move your soul a bit. The last chapter will bring you so close to a loved one that as moved on it may make you tear up with joy. This is now one of my favorite books!