Catching the Light by Joy Harjo, part of the Why I Write series, offers both wonderful insight into her writing life as well as inspiring perspective on the power of words, especially poetry.

This is the third book in this series I have read and what makes them powerful is that they are all very personal. In this volume we get a glimpse into Harjo's early life, how contemporary lives are in conversation with past and future lives, and what can be accomplished with words. The things fulfilled through writing are personal (as in making her life better), cultural (both within and between cultures), and political (at the very least through making people see others as human beings rather than labels).

This is one of those books that will reward returning to the book in the future. Whether I come back to the volume as a whole or revisit particularly compelling chapters, I know that I will be coming back to it. For comfort, for stimulation, and for inspiration.

Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys Harjo's poetry as well as those who like looking behind the curtain of great writers. This also will be a great source of inspiration (yeah, I have said that a lot, but it fits) for writers who might be wondering why they write.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )

Poetry is not a career–it is a state of being.
from Catching the Light by Jo Harjo

After reading Jo Harjo’s poetry collection Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light, I was lucky to get access to Catching the Light in which she addresses the birth and purpose of poetry in her life and in her heritage. Her book is a testament to the power of words, how they shed light on the dark places and empower those from whom power has been taken away. Poetry connects us; poetry give us the power to survive; poetry cries out for justice and extolls beauty. Poetry is about connection. And it is this that is most important, especially today when hatred and division and the pandemic have separated us.

I consider every poem a kind of love poem.
from Catching the Light by Jo Harjo

Harjo’s writing about the indigenous experience and history is powerful, and I am reminded again how little I understand the experience of so many people, being of European ancestry and growing up working class. Sure, my ancestor in the 16th c was persecuted and jailed for being an Anabaptist. And the British let my Irish ancestors starve and my German nationalist ancestors fled Russian oppression just before WWI. And, yes, my immigrant Swiss Brethren ancestor colonized the Shenandoah Valley and was scalped along with his wife, and four of his children murdered, and his son taken hostage. But my cultural heritage prevailed, my ancestors took over the country. Their children were not taken away to be ‘educated’ in schools of abuse, their language and culture taken away. We took the land and used it up and poisoned it. We enslaved people and denied their humanity. We made the laws that protected us.

And we are the lesser for having prevailed. We did not listen to the wisdom offered by Native Americans about how to live in this world and how to cherish it.

“Every poem is a prayer, a supplication in the cacophony of humanity,” Harjo writes. “There are more words now than ever,” she continues, we are deluged by them. Words can separate and destroy, but they are also “made of ancient songs of coming together that lift us over and through to beauty.” Poetry can “speak to the truth of an age,” and Harjo encourages us to tell our stories, to “catch the light.”

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased. ( )