To read the poetry of Joy Harjo is to hear the voice of the earth, to see the landscape of time and timelessness, and, most important, to get a glimpse of people who struggle to understand, to know themselves, and to survive. As Harjo has continued to refine her craft, her poems have become visions, answers to age-old questions, keys to understanding the complex nature of twentieth-century American life, and guides to the past and the future.

The daughter of Allen W. and Wynema Baker Foster, Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is an enrolled member of the Creek tribe; when she was sixteen, she moved to the Southwest to attend the Institute of American Indian Arts. She graduated from the University of New Mexico with a B.A. in poetry in 1976. She received her M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Iowa...