She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.
These were the same horses.
Should I dream you afraid so that
you are forced to save yourself?
Or should you ride colored horses into the cutting edge of the sky to know that we're alive we are alive.
First published in 1983 and now considered a classic, She Had Some Horses is a powerful exploration of womanhood's most intimate moments. Joy Harjo's words speak of women's despair, of their imprisonment and ruin at the hands of men and society, but also of their awakenings, power, and love. Published by W.W. Norton
NEW EDITION
She Had Some Horses
BOOKS
The Last Song
poetry chapbook, Puerto del Sol Press 1975, out of print
What Moon Drove Me to This? I. Reed Books, 1979, out of print
She Had Some Horses
W.W. Norton Fall 2008, (Original publisher Thunder’s Mouth Press 1984, through three editions)
Secrets from the Center of the World
University of Arizona Press, 1989 (Harjo poetic prose with Stephen Strom’s photographs)
In Mad Love and War, Wesleyan University Press, 1990
Fishing, fine press chapbook, Oxhead Press, 1991
The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, W.W. Norton 1994
The Spiral of Memory, Interviews, U. of Michigan Press 1996 (co-edited with Laura Coltelli)
Reinventing the Enemy’s Language, Contemporary Native Women’s Writing of North America 1997
The Good Luck Cat, Harcourt 2000
A Map to the Next World, W.W. Norton, NY 2000
How We Became Human, New and Selected Poems, W.W. Norton, NY 2003
For a Girl Becoming, forthcoming from the University of Arizona Press, October 2009 (young adult/children’s book)
Soul Talk Soul Language 2011
Crazy Brave 2012
Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a member of the Mvskoke (Creek) Nation.
Her seven books of poetry include
She Had Some Horses,
The Woman Who Fell From the Sky,
and How We Became Human,
New and Selected Poems.
Her poetry has garnered many awards including a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award: the New Mexico Governor’s Award
for Excellence in the Arts, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native
Writers Circle of the Americas; and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.
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“In Soul Talk Joy Harjo provides a rare and treasurable acoustic: the sound of an artist and woman thinking
for herself, and for us. Never afraid of large questions
of purpose and identity. But never remiss either
in providing beautiful, small details of craft
and commitment.
This is an essential book.”
—Eavan Boland, author of New Collected Poems
Soul Talk Soul Language
NEW BOOK
Crazy Brave
In this transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, Joy Harjo, one of our leading Native American voices, details her journey to becoming a poet.
Interview with Joy Harjo
Writing Out Loud