U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo: Eagle Poem

In honor of the new U.S. Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo. 


Eagle Poem 

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
Steadily 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.

by Joy Harjo
From In Mad Love and War

Poetry Wednesday: Interrogative, and a New Poet Laureate

Congratulations to America's new Poet Laureate! Here is a poem from her book Duende.

Interrogative

Related Poem Content Details

1. Falmouth, Massachusetts, 1972

Oak table, knotted legs, the chirp

And scrape of tines to mouth.

Four children, four engines

Of want. That music.

What did your hand mean to smooth

Across the casket of your belly?

What echoed there, if not me—tiny body

Afloat, akimbo, awake or at rest?

Every night you fed the others

Bread leavened with the grains

Of your own want. How

Could you stand me near you,

In you, jump and kick tricking

The heart, when what you prayed for

Was my father’s shadow, your name

In his dangerous script, an envelope

Smelling of gun-powder, bay rum,

Someone to wrestle, sing to, question,

Climb?

                        2. Interstate 101 South, California, 1981

Remember the radio, the Coca-Cola sign

Phosphorescent to the left, bridge

After bridge, as though our lives were

Engineered simply to go? And so we went

Into those few quiet hours

Alone together in the dark, my arm

On the rest beside yours, our lights

Pricking at fog, tugging us patiently

Forward like a needle through gauze.

Night held us like a house.

Sometimes an old song

Would fill the car like a ghost.

                                    3. Leroy, Alabama, 2005

There’s still a pond behind your mother’s old house,

Still a stable with horses, a tractor rusted and stuck

Like a trophy in mud. And the red house you might

Have thrown stones at still stands on stilts up the dirt road.

A girl from the next town over rides in to lend us

Her colt, cries when one of us kicks it with spurs.

Her father wants to buy her a trailer, let her try her luck

In the shows. They stay for dinner under the tent

Your brother put up for the Fourth. Firebugs flare

And vanish. I am trying to let go of something.

My heart cluttered with names that mean nothing.

Our racket races out to the darkest part of the night.

The woods catch it and send it back. 

                        4. But let’s say you’re alive again—

Your hands are long and tell your age.

You hold them there, twirling a bent straw,

And my reflection watches, hollow-faced,

Not trying to hide. The waiters make it seem

Like Cairo. Back and forth shouting

That sharp language. And for the first time

I tell you everything. No shame

In my secrets, shoddy as laundry.

I have praised your God

For the blessing of the body, snuck

From pleasure to pleasure, lying for it, 

Holding it like a coin or a key in my fist.

I know now you’ve known all along.

I won’t change. I want to give

Everything away. To wander forever.

Here is a pot of tea. Let’s share it

Slowly, like sisters.

by Tracy K. Smith

courtesy of The Poetry Foundation

Blood on the Wheel — National Poetry Month

Blood on the Wheel

     Ezekiel saw the wheel,
     way up in the middle of the air.
               Traditional Gospel Song

Blood on the night soil man en route to the country prison

Blood on the sullen chair, the one that holds you with its pleasure

Blood inside the quartz, the beauty watch, the eye of the guard

Blood on the slope of names & the tattoos hidden

Blood on the Virgin, behind the veils,

Behind—in the moon angel's gold oracle hair

                    What blood is this, is it the blood of the worker rat?

                    Is it the blood of the clone governor, the city maid?

                    Why does it course in s's & z's?

Blood on the couch, made for viewing automobiles & face cream

Blood on the pin, this one going through you without any pain

Blood on the screen, the green torso queen of slavering hearts

Blood on the grandmother's wish, her tawdry stick of Texas

Blood on the daughter's breast who sews roses

Blood on the father, does anyone remember him, bluish?

                    Blood from a kitchen fresco, in thick amber strokes

                    Blood from the baby's right ear, from his ochre nose

                    What blood is this?

Blood on the fender, in the sender's shoe, in his liquor sack

Blood on the street, call it Milagro Boulevard, Mercy Lanes #9

Blood on the alien, in the alligator jacket teen boy Juan

                    There is blood, there, he says

                    Blood here too, down here, she says

                    Only blood, the Blood Mother sings

Blood driving miniature American queens stamped into rage

Blood driving rappers in Mercedes blackened & whitened in news

Blood driving the snare-eyed professor searching for her panties

Blood driving the championship husband bent in Extreme Unction

                   Blood of the orphan weasel in heat, the Calvinist farmer in wheat

                   Blood of the lettuce rebellion on the rise, the cannery worker's prize

Blood of the painted donkey forced into prostitute zebra,

Blood of the Tijuana tourist finally awake & forced into pimp sleep again

It is blood time, Sir Terminator says,

It is blood time, Sir Simpson winks,

It is blood time, Sir McVeigh weighs.

                   Her nuclear blood watch soaked, will it dry?

                   His whitish blood ring smoked, will it foam?

                   My groin blood leather roped, will it marry?

                   My wife's peasant blood spoked, will it ride again?

Blood in the tin, in the coffee bean, in the maquila oración

Blood in the language, in the wise text of the market sausage

Blood in the border web, the penal colony shed, in the bilingual yard

                    Crow blood blues perched on nothingness again

                    fly over my field, yellow-green & opal

                    Dog blood crawl & swish through my sheets

Who will eat this speckled corn?

Who shall be born on this Wednesday war bed?

Blood in the acid theater, again, in the box office smash hit

Blood in the Corvette tank, in the crack talk crank below

Blood boat Navy blood glove Army ventricle Marines

in the cookie sex jar, camouflaged rape whalers

Roam & rumble, investigate my Mexican hoodlum blood

                    Tiny blood behind my Cuban ear, wine colored & hushed

                    Tiny blood in the death row tool, in the middle-aged corset

                    Tiny blood sampler, tiny blood, you hush up again, so tiny

Blood in the Groove Shopping Center,

In blue Appalachia river, in Detroit harness spleen

Blood in the Groove Virus machine,

In low ocean tide, in Iowa soy bean

Blood in the Groove Lynch mob orchestra,

South of Herzegovina, south, I said

Blood marching for the Immigration Patrol, prized & arrogant

Blood spawning in the dawn break of African Blood Tribes, grimacing

& multiple—multiple, I said

Blood on the Macho Hat, the one used for proper genuflections

Blood on the faithful knee, the one readied for erotic negation

Blood on the willing nerve terminal, the one open for suicide

Blood at the age of seventeen

Blood at the age of one, dumped in a Greyhound bus

Blood mute & autistic & cauterized & smuggled Mayan

& burned in border smelter tar

                    Could this be yours? Could this item belong to you?

                    Could this ticket be what you ordered, could it?

          Blood on the wheel, blood on the reel

          Bronze dead gold & diamond deep. Blood be fast.

by Juan Felipe Herrera
from Border-crosser with a Lamborghini Dream
courtesy Poetry Foundation

Poetry Wednesday: The Indoors Is Endless

We hope a poet will be named as the Nobel Laureate in literature later this week. However, until then, let's enjoy a poem by last year's Nobel Laureate, the poet Tomas Tranströmer.

The Indoors is Endless

It’s spring in 1827, Beethoven

hoists his death-mask and sails off.

The grindstones are turning in Europe’s windmills.

The wild geese are flying northwards.

Here is the north, here is Stockholm

swimming palaces and hovels.

The logs in the royal fireplace

collapse from Attention to At Ease.

Peace prevails, vaccine and potatoes,

but the city wells breathe heavily.

Privy barrels in sedan chairs like paschas

are carried by night over the North Bridge.

The cobblestones make them stagger

mamselles loafers gentlemen.

Implacably still, the sign-board

with the smoking blackamoor.

So many islands, so much rowing

with invisible oars against the current!

The channels open up, April May

and sweet honey dribbling June.

The heat reaches islands far out.

The village doors are open, except one.

The snake-clock’s pointer licks the silence.

The rock slopes glow with geology’s patience.

It happened like this, or almost.

It is an obscure family tale

about Erik, done down by a curse

disabled by a bullet through the soul.

He went to town, met an enemy

and sailed home sick and grey.

Keeps to his bed all that summer.

The tools on the wall are in mourning.

He lies awake, hears the woolly flutter

of night moths, his moonlight comrades.

His strength ebbs out, he pushes in vain

against the iron-bound tomorrow.

And the God of the depths cries out of the depths

‘Deliver me! Deliver yourself!’

All the surface action turns inwards.

He’s taken apart, put together.

The wind rises and the wild rose bushes

catch on the fleeing light.

The future opens, he looks into

the self-rotating kaleidoscope

sees indistinct fluttering faces

family faces not yet born.

By mistake his gaze strikes me

as I walk around here in Washington

among grandiose houses where only   

every second column bears weight.

White buildings in crematorium style

where the dream of the poor turns to ash.

The gentle downward slope gets steeper

and imperceptibly becomes an abyss.

by Tomas Tranströmer

Translated by Robin Fulton
Published in 1997 by Bloodaxe Books
Courtesy of The Poetry Foundation

Letter Home                                                                       

--New Orleans, November 1910

Four weeks have passed since I left, and still 
I must write to you of no work. I've worn down 
the soles and walked through the tightness 
of my new shoes calling upon the merchants, 
their offices bustling. All the while I kept thinking 
my plain English and good writing would secure 
for me some modest position Though I dress each day 
in my best, hands covered with the lace gloves 
you crocheted--no one needs a girl. How flat 
the word sounds, and heavy. My purse thins. 
I spend foolishly to make an appearance of quiet 
industry, to mask the desperation that tightens 
my throat. I sit watching-- 

though I pretend not to notice--the dark maids
ambling by with their white charges. Do I deceive 
anyone? Were they to see my hands, brown 
as your dear face, they'd know I'm not quite 
what I pretend to be. I walk these streets 
a white woman, or so I think, until I catch the eyes 
of some stranger upon me, and I must lower mine, 
a negress again. There are enough things here 
to remind me who I am. Mules lumbering through 
the crowded streets send me into reverie, their footfall 
the sound of a pointer and chalk hitting the blackboard 
at school, only louder. Then there are women, clicking 
their tongues in conversation, carrying their loads 
on their heads. Their husky voices, the wash pots 
and irons of the laundresses call to me.

I thought not to do the work I once did, back bending 
and domestic; my schooling a gift--even those half days
at picking time, listening to Miss J--. How 
I'd come to know words, the recitations I practiced 
to sound like her, lilting, my sentences curling up
or trailing off at the ends. I read my books until
I nearly broke their spines, and in the cotton field,
I repeated whole sections I'd learned by heart,
spelling each word in my head to make a picture
I could see, as well as a weight I could feel
in my mouth. So now, even as I write this
and think of you at home, Goodbye

is the waving map of your palm, is 
a stone on my tongue.

by Natasha Trethewey, the country's new Poet Laureate

Courtesy poets.orghttp://www.poets.org