Hey, welcome to NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. I think anybody who's ever studied

writing or pursued it as a profession has asked themselves, what's the point of this? You know,

like other people are out here fixing cars or being nurses or making food, you know, stuff that

tangibly helps people.

Even Joy Harjo wrestled with this question, and she's the poet laureate.

She's got a new memoir called Poet Warrior, and she told NPR's Michelle Martin that poetry

helped her locate and make sense of a lot of pain she'd been carrying around.

Here's the interview.

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Before Joy Harjo became a renowned poet, artist, an editor, she was a quiet child who was more

likely to take in the world from the sidelines than become the center of attention. But in a powerful, and yes, poetic new memoir, the U.S. Poet Laureate charged the journey to finding her voice and finally learning how to use it. And she shares the lesson she's learned along the way. It's called Poet Warrior. And Joy Harjo is with us now to tell us more about it.

Welcome back to this program. Thank you so much for joining us.

Well, thank you so much for inviting me.

We last spoke with you about the gorgeous anthology of Native poetry that you co-edited, and that's just one of your many published works.

I mean, you have authored, what, nine poetry collections,

and you've even published a previous memoir called Crazy Brave. So what were you hoping for with this new work? Why this book and why now? This book was written during the pandemic,

you know, a time of great political division, climate change,

all of those parts of the story that every one of us is confronting and dealing with right now

individually and collectively.

...