Joy Harjo's "Perhaps the World Ends Here"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2022

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Joy Harjo (/ˈhɑːrdʒoʊ/ HAR-joh; born May 9, 1951) is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She is the incumbent United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She is also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to serve three terms. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation (Este Mvskokvlke) and belongs to Oce Vpofv (Hickory Ground).[1] She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to The Daily Poem from Goldberry Studios. I'm David Kern, and today is Tuesday, May 10th, 2022.
0:08.8	Today's poem is by a poet who had a birthday yesterday, Joy Harjo. She was born on May 9th,
0:15.0	1951. She is an American poet, musician, playwright, author, and she is the incumbent United States poet laureate,
0:23.4	and she was the first Native American to hold that honor. As you can imagine for somebody who
0:28.7	has held that office, she is highly thought of award-winning poet. She's won the Wallace Stevens
0:34.5	Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. She has won the Pulitzer Prize.
0:38.5	She's won the Penn USA Literary Prize.
0:40.9	So she is one of our greatest poets.
0:44.0	And the poem that I'm going to read today is called Perhaps the World Ends Here.
0:47.2	It's from a book called The Woman Who Fell from the Sky,
0:50.6	which was published by Norton in 1994.
0:57.9	So this is how it goes. Perhaps the world ends here by Joy Harjo. The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live. The gifts
1:08.6	of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table.
1:12.9	So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
1:16.1	We chase chickens or dogs away from it.
1:19.5	Babies teeth at the corner.
1:21.5	They scrape their knees under it.
1:23.7	It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human.
1:28.5	We make men at it. We make women. At this table we gossip. We call enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
1:38.4	Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down
1:45.8	selves, and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table. This table has been a house
1:52.0	in the rain, an umbrella in the sun. Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide
	...

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