Joy Harjo has won the 2019 Jackson Poetry Prize. The prize, endowed by John and Susan Jackson, carries an award of $65,000 and aims to provide what poets need: time and encouragement to write. She joins previous winners Elizabeth Alexander, Patricia Spears Jones, Henri Cole, and others. Read more: at.pw.org/Jackson2019...
What a poet, what a performer...
Her Eagle Poem:
To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.
Joy Harjo, “Eagle Poem” from In Mad Love and War. Copyright © 1990 by Joy Harjo. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press,
www.wesleyan.edu/wespress.
Source: In Mad Love and War (Wesleyan University Press, 1990)
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