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Hey, it's Rachel. Just a heads up. There's a story about domestic violence in this episode.

What's the biggest risk you've ever taken?

Recently, to me, this is the biggest risk. I sat in at the blue note in New York.

And when you say sat in. I played a song. I played a song. To me, that was like bungee

jumping from the bridge of the Royal Gorge.

I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard, the game where cards control the conversation.

Each week, my guest answers questions about their life. Questions pulled from a deck of cards.

They're allowed to skip one question and to

flip one question back on me. My guest this week is poet Joy Harjo. Every poet has their themes,

and I realize mine is transformation. What happens, you know, in those transformative spaces.

Joy Harjo is one of the most revered poets in the United States, and there are all kinds of reasons why that didn't have to happen.

She actually studied pre-med in college, but as if to hedge her bets on that particular career choice, she began taking creative writing classes.

And in the end, the arts won out. Stability be damned. Joy grew up in Oklahoma as part of the Muskogee Creek

nation, but her stepfather forced Joy to suppress her creativity. She wasn't even allowed to sing

in the house. That creative spirit could have died inside her, but when she was finally out on

her own, she realized that making music and telling stories and writing poetry wasn't

just something she wanted to do.

It was something she had to do.

Since then, she's used her writing to capture the diverse experiences of native people in this

...