Tuesday, July 9, 2019

The new poet laureate Joy Harjo

The Librarian of Congress has named the new poet laureate, the wonderful Joy Harjo. According to the Washington Post, "The poet laureate position, maintained through the Library of Congress, comes with a beautiful office in the Jefferson Building and a modest stipend, but no official duties. Each poet is free to design the one-year position however he or she would like." I have seen the poetry office, and I can say not only that it is beautiful, but it also has a spectacular view from the very top of the Jefferson Building.

The poet laureate position is one of the many things that make the Library of Congress great. And the poet laureate will kick off the literary season in Washington, DC.

Here is one of her poems:

'Singing Everything'
Once there were songs for everything,
Songs for planting, for growing, for harvesting,
For eating, getting drunk, falling asleep,
For sunrise, birth, mind-break, and war.
For death (those are the heaviest songs and they
Have to be pried from the earth with shovels of grief).
Now all we hear are falling-in-love songs and
Falling apart after falling in love songs.
The earth is leaning sideways
And a song is emerging from the floods
And fires. Urgent tendrils lift toward the sun.
You must be friends with silence to hear.
The songs of the guardians of silence are the most powerful —
They are the most rare.

“Singing Everything” copyright © 2019 by Joy Harjo. To be published in “An American Sunrise,” by Joy Harjo (August 2019; W. W. Norton & Company). Reprinted in the Washington Post by permission of Anderson Literary Management.

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