Common Themes in Joy Harjo’s Poems
The traditional Native Americans did not have extremely influential writers. The few writers who were present could not produce perfect creations attributable to the diverse challenges in Native America. This was not the case with all writers; some were outstanding among them all. One of these outstanding writers from the Native American community is Joy Harjo. She is a female poet who also presents significant messages to both her native and global readership. Most of her poems depict her heritage as a Native American. She seems to reveal to the world her past plights such as having a teenage pregnancy and raising two children as a single parent. Some of her famous works include the following, “Remember”, “New Orleans” “She Had Some Horses”. These poems have a significant similarity in their respective messages and the style that Joy Harjo uses. These also allow Joy Harjo to use her poetic justice in offering poetic explications on the issue of feminism and other fundamental issues (Lown, &. Steinbergh 67).
Similarities
Styles
The three poems have similar use of style that makes all these poems to be memorable. The first style that is common to all the poems is repetition. The readership of all these poems by Joy Harjo realizes that the poems are extremely repetitive. She uses the style of repetition in this extreme manner to achieve the following objectives in the poem. The first objective that she wishes to achieve is to enable her respective readership of each of the poems to remember each poem in its entirety. The second reason that probably explains why repetition is a common style in her poems is to increase the musicality in all these poems. All the repetitions that Joy Harjo introduces in her poems make the readership wish to sing the respective poems. This implies that repetition enables Joy Harjo to make her poems musical. In the poem “She Had Some Horses”, Joy Harjo repeats the phrase ‘she had some horses’. She also ensures that the above phrases are common in all the stanzas of this poem except the last stanza that has only one line. It is equally fundamental to note that Joy Harjo uses the same phrase as a refraining phrase of the entire poem making the poem extremely repetitive.
In the other poem that Joy Harjo titles “Remember”, the style of repetition is notable throughout the poem. In this poem, Harjo repeats the word ‘Remember’ in a significant portion of the poem. The repetition is extremely useful in helping Joy Harjo be successful in the successful delivery of her message in the poem. She uses the word to introduce to her readership all the elements that they need to remember in their respective lives. She asks her readership to remember their heritages by including the following phrases in the poem.
“Remember the sky that you were born under”,
“Remember the moon….”
“Remember your father”
One wonders if there would be perfect delivery of the message without all the repetitions that she includes in the poem. Like the first poem, the repetition also increases the musicality of the entire poem. The deliberate repetitions in the poem allow Harjo Joy to force her readership to remember the messages that she wishes her poems to pass.
There is also a significant element of repetition in her other poem that she titles “New Orleans”. She keeps referring to Hernando’s plight in the entire poem.
Another significant style that is common to both poems is symbolism. Joy Harjo connects her Native American experiences to the challenges that people in the current world seem to face. In the poem that she titles “She Had Some Horses”, she uses the word horse in an extremely symbolic way. The most notable theme in the poem is the allegiance that people should have to their culture. The symbol of the horse represents the traditional culture of Native Americans. Several historical records indicate that the culture of Native Americans was inclusive of horse riding. The horse represented an entire livelihood of the same Native Americans. When Harjo Joy introduces this symbol in the poem, she attempts to remind her readership of the culture of the entire Native American community.
The diction in the poem “Remember” is symbolic from the references in makes in the development of the poem. The poet begins by urging the readers to remember the sky that they were born under. This strong symbol refers to the culture of the readership of the poem. She uses the symbol of under the sky to refer to the origin that each person has. Other symbols that are common in this poem include skin and motion. When she asks the readers to remember the skins that they are, she means that the same readers must never forget their origins. The symbol of motion refers to the growth that her readers might experience and abolish certain cultural practices (Lown & Steinbergh 67).
Themes
All the three poems seem to have a significant similarity in their respective messages. In the poem, remember Joy Harjo uses an exceptional diction to deliver her message. She urges her readership to appreciate the notion of life. In her other poem, “She Had Some Horse” Joy Harjo does the same thing. She uses this poem to ask her female readership to explore their strengths. She insists that they need to face their respective challenges regardless of the environments that they live. The poem is an awakening to the Native American woman who seems to be naive in almost all their endeavors (Gray 49).
The poem is similar to the first one that asks the readership to remember their respective heritages. In both poems, Joy Harjo seems to plead to the respective readership to focus on being happy. This implies that the themes in the two poems focus of the significance of life for anyone who reads the poems. The only difference that seems to prevail between the poems is that the later focuses on women. Careful analysis of the two poems also reveals that Joy Harjo seems to appreciate life. This is probably why all the poems that she creates seem to embrace the phenomena of life to her readership.
The diversity in the two poems does not prevent Joy Harjo to make all the allegations that she does in the same poems. In the third poem that Joy Harjo titles “New Orleans”, she seems to focus on the issue of her readership realizing the significance of their respective culture. In the poem, she attempts to urge her readership be conscious in all their endeavors. She appears to educate her readership on culture and general awareness. All the three poems are similar because they educate the respective readership to be courageous in defending their heritage. Apart from the defense of heritage that the poems suggest, they also educate the readerships. Joy Harjo creates these poems at different times of her poetry career. This does not imply that the poems are diverse in their messages. Insured, the poems display the above similarity in the themes that they deliver (Gray 45).
All these poems display a similarity in their themes and styles while addressing the readers. The poet seems to focus on educating people to value their culture. Readers notice that she includes similar styles in the three poems to achieve the educative goals that she appears to have commendable passion. The styles that she uses in the three poems are also similar and include repetition. Other styles that she uses are symbols, which make all her poems to be extremely fascinating. It is unlikely that Joy Harjo planned the coincidence in the similarity of her poems. The similarity could be attributable to the passion she had for the dominant themes in the respective poems. Apart from being passionate, Harjo Joy also had a sad experience that probably has significant inspiration for her poems. She is an extremely successful poet whose poems are equally educative.
Work Cited
Gray, Richard J. A Web of Words: The Great Dialogue of Southern Literature. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007. Print.
Lown, Fredric, and Judith W. Steinbergh. Reading and Writing Poetry with Teenagers. Portland, Maine: J. Weston Walch, 1996. Print.
