[...]... something “that opens everything up.” Her poetic expression, thus interpreted, allows her “to speak directly in a language that was intended to destroy us” or, to quote another famous text of hers on Native American women writers, edited with Gloria Bird, “reinventing the enemy’s language. ” It is a language at the basis of so-called “minority literature”—Indian, in this case—a label that Harjo identifies... you to “Speak directly in a language that was meant to destroy us.” Do you find yourself attracted to that particular challenge? As an artist, I don’t really think about all that—being interviewed also engages the creative You know, you have to come up with answers for interviewers [laugh] But yeah, you do it because it absolutely moves you What attracted me to poetry was language, was basically sound... means of transporting the word What enticed me about poetry was being able to hold in my hands and in my heart these small pieces of meticulous and beautiful meaning It was like reclaiming the soul, or giving the soul a voice When you talk about your first encounter with music, you describe it as being drawn into the music on an almost physical level There are a lot of other instances in which memory... of the human soul, which is directly connected to Strom’s studies We all appear to struggle in this universe Poetry is basically another discipline and provides a structure for understanding the world Science is a religion Its world is mechanistic Some philosophical strands of American and European poetry are similar, based on a mechanistic world, and more theoretical To dip down into the soul is to... way The way I took it at that time was as a question: what is such a primitive poet doing in such a refined place? And that connection between the soul and the world is important to you in your poetry? To me, that’s what poetry is The communication with the soul is imÂ�Â� portant to me, and maybe this, too, is considered primitive! There’s communication going on here Right In a couple of previous interviews,... to play saxophone on that album, played soprano and alto My singing voice began to evolve and on the next project I learned to sing The writing too has been affected Three of the songs on Native Joy for Real are written as songs The rest were poems first, and I suppose continue to be poems It’s a process and continues to be a process One of your most recent books, A Map to the Next World, makes use... Americans, and they are insulted when they are turned away from a ceremony, or told that certain texts or songs are dangerous and belong to certain families or people They can write about anything they want and it has nothing to do with integrity Sometimes integrity means being silent, about particular songs or texts because they are to be opened only in certain places or under certain conditions because... a challenge that expands, in order to reconstruct this land called America With the strength of writing, of poetry, of myths, it is possible to lay the foundations for a change, and to penetrate with language a spiral of cognitive experience, the essence that genuinely gives meaning to the life of our intellect and our spirit This is a concept of poetic art where there is no place for higher forms... my mother’s singing voice I have a very, very faint memory of that experience while in the womb, and then it became the center of my world, especially in the formative years, when my mother was writing songs and singing for country swing bands, jukeboxes in truck stops where she worked, the radio, guitar players at the house Music was and is my body I don’t think I ever felt a separation between music... contemporary America Joy Harjo lives in many different worlds, and by means of these interviews, she not only allows us to enter into her creative laboratory but she also draws a moving geography of the soul, a sort of irregular autobiography that possesses an extraordinary narrative effectiveness The reader perceives that she is always intensely dedicated to reaching, or recovering, intangible perfections .