A Lesson in Resilience and the Teachings of Poetry

National Poetry Month may be over, but Santa Barbara continues to bring the best of the laureates to our town. United States Poet Laureate Ada Limón closed out poetry month, and then last Thursday, UCSB hosted Joy Harjo, 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States. Harjo was the perfect choice for the MultiCultural Center’s Resilient Love series. To read her poetry, songs, memoirs, and plays is to understand how she navigates obstacles and rises above them.

If you are not familiar with our previous United States Poet Laureate, a good place to acquaint yourself with her 12 books of poetry is to start with Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: 50 Poems for 50 Years, with a foreword by Sandra Cisneros, a rare insight into the friendship of two once-struggling poets turned literary giants. The notes section of the book is fascinating and tells the backstory and sometimes to whom the poem was written. “The Life of Beauty,” a New York Times assignment, is also on her music album, I Pray for My Enemies. I’ve spent the past couple of days listening to her songs on Apple Music. 

Cisneros describes being startled when she first heard Joy Harjo’s singing voice: “It was a voice as soft as the wings of sparrows, as sweet and transparent as rain, so unlike her deeper speaking voice, a wonder to me. Where had she hidden that voice all those years? More important, why?”