Soul Talk, Song Language

by Harjo, Joy; Winder, Tanaya; Coltelli, Laura

• ISBN13: 9780819571502
• ISBN10: 0819571504
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-10-15
• Publisher: Wesleyan Univ Pr

Summary

Joy Harjo is a "poet-healer-philosopher-saxophonist," and one of the most powerful Native American voices of her generation. She has spent the past two decades exploring her place in poetry, music, dance/performance, and art. Soul Talk, Soul Language gathers together in one complete collection many of these explorations and conversations. Through an eclectic assortment of media, including personal essays, interviews, and newspaper columns, Harjo reflects upon the nuances and development of her art, the importance of her origins, and the arduous reconstructions of the tribal past, as well as the dramatic confrontation between Native American and Anglo civilizations. Harjo takes us on a journey into her identity as a woman and an artist, poised between poetry and music, encompassing tribal heritage and reassessments and comparisons with the American cultural patrimony. She presents herself in an exquisitely literary context that is rooted in ritual and ceremony and veers over the edge where language becomes music.

Table of Contents

Foreword: A Carrier of Memory	p. ix
Laura Coltelli
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
Interviews
Becoming the Thing Itself	p. 3
Interview with Triplopia
Music, Poetry, and Stories: Returning to the Root Source	p. 27
Interview with Rebecca Seiferle
Exploring the Depths of Creation and Meaning	p. 31
Interview with Simmons Buntin
The Thirst for Artistic Brilliance	p. 38
Interview with Pam Kingsbury
In the Horizon of Light with Joy Harjo	p. 46
Interview with Ruben Quesada
Writing, Constructing the Next World	p. 50
Interview with Bill Nevins
Transcending Writing on Singing Wings	p. 54
Interview with Tanaya Winder
Song Language: Creating from the Heart, Out	p. 61
Interview with Loriene Roy
You Might as Well Dance	p. 68
Interview with Harbour Winn, Elaine Smokewood, and John McBryde
The Craft of Soul Talk	p. 78
Interview with Susan Thornton Hobby
Columns by Joy Harjo
Global Roots	p. 87
Muscogee Nation News, October 2006
Identity	p. 90
Muscogee Nation News, December 2006
Censorship and the Power of Images	p. 513
Muscogee Nation News, May 2007
It's Difficult Enough to Be Human	p. 97
Muscogee Nation News, June 2007
Dehumanization Flatlines	p. 101
Muscogee Nation News, August 2007
We Are Story Gatherers	p. 104
Muscogee Nation News, June 200S
We Are the Earth	p. 106
Muscogee Nation News, August 2009
A Way to Speak Their Souls	p. 108
Muscogee Nation News, February 2010
Energy of the Transaction	p. 110
Muscogee Nation News, April 2010
Watching the World Shift	p. 112
Muscogee Nation News, July 2010
The Last Word: Prose Pieces by Joy Harjo
Preface for She Had Some Horses	p. 121
From the second edition, W.W. Notion, 2009
The Art of Resistance	p. 123
Preface for Indigenous People's journal of Law, Culture and Resistance, 2004
Afterword for The Delicacy and Strength of Lace	p. 127
From the second edition, Graywolf Press, 2009
In Honor of Patricia Grace	p. 129
World Literature Today, May-June 2009
I Used to Think a Poem Could Become a Flower	p. 133
Introduction to Ploughshares, December 2004
Talking with the Sun	p. 135
From This I Believe, July 2007
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