She Had Some Horses
April is National Poetry Month in the US, and this April marks the 25th annual celebration. To honor the month and the many incredible poets writing today, I plan to highlight a number of poetry collections through out April. I am thrilled to start with Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s collection of poetry, She Had Some Horses (2008, originally published in 1983), which is a powerful articulation of life as a native woman in modern times. Through stunning eloquence, Harjo presents touching, moving, inspiring poem after poem.
In this 2008 reprinting of her original collection, Harjo includes a delightful introduction in which she responds to the oft-asked question: “What do the horses mean”. Since she, quite obviously, is a master of language, I will let her response speak for itself: “I usually say, 'It’s not the poet’s work to reduce the poem from poetry to logical sense.’ Or, ‘It’s not about what the poem means, it’s ‘how’ the poem means.’ Then I ask, ‘So what do the horses mean to you?’” (ix). She goes on to describe her craft as “stepping into a force field or dream field of language, of sound. Each journey different, just as the ocean or the sky is never the same from one day to another” (ix). She is “engaged by the music, the deep” and she wanders through this landscape, this dreamscape, “until the poem” and the poet “find each other” (ix). She concludes, “Sometimes I go by horseback” (ix). Horses, Harjo shares, are closely linked to her family on her father’s side, and have punctuated and perhaps embodied her path as a human and an artist. And while she clearly states it is not the job of the poet to define what the horses mean, she beautifully describes:
Horses, like the rest of us, can transform and be transformed. A horse could be a streak of sunrise, a body of sand, a moment of ecstasy. A horse could be all of this at the same time. Or a horse might be nothing at all but the imagination of the wind. Or a herd of horses galloping from one song to the next could become a book of poetry (x).
As this passage suggests, Harjo’s poetry interweaves with the natural world in breathtaking ways. Her eco-poetics are, perhaps, what I loved best; although her poems end with such panache that it is certainly worth mentioning and noticing.
The collection that follows this moving introduction is just profound. She Had Some Horses comprises of four sections (1. Survivors, 2. What I Should Have Said, 3. She Had Some Horses, and 4. I Give You Back). The first section—Survivors—is by far the longest and includes 25 poems. The second—What I Should Have Said—includes eleven poems. The third section—She Had Some Horses—include five sections including the titular poem. While the final section—I Give You Back—is a single poem of the same name.
She Had Some Horses includes so many poems of note, but the final one, “I Give You Back” ends with such a melancholy hopefulness, that I would feel remiss in not mentioning it. The poem addresses, and releases, fear itself. What better way to conclude a collection of poetry that investigates themes of loss and betrayal, than to address fear directly, and leave it.
Harjo’s art is as much musical as it is poetic (recall her description in the introduction as being “engaged by the music, the deep”). She takes her talents on stage with her band, Joy Harjo and the Arrow Dynamics. If you find She Had Some Horses engaging, I encourage you to spend some time watching her on stage and let the music and the poetry engage you as well.
Bibliography:
Harjo, Joy. She Had Some Horses. W. W. Norton & Co: 2008.
