Summary of Joy Harjo’s Masterclass on Poetic Thinking

11 key takeaways from the 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate

masterclass.com

1. Poetry is the language of the prophets and truth tellers. There’s something about it that feeds your spirit in a way that is unlike anything else. Even as it uses words as its tools, it goes where words cannot go. When there are no words possible for what you’ve experienced, or what you feel, or what you need to say, poetry will always be there.
2. Silence is like the white light of sound. Listening is most crucial to poetry, just as it is to living a good life and to creating. In the modern world, there is so much noise everywhere, but when you listen to silence, it’s so full of everything, it’s sort of like how white light is full of every color, yet it is white light. We need more than just food and shelter to live. We also need metaphors, like we need light, because it gives us lift.
3. Poetry can be activism. For Joy Harjo, her poetry is an expression of the voice of Native American rights. It comes from a place of compassion and humility, where the personal becomes the political, and the political becomes the personal. The best poems contain a spark of light, so we can find our way through the dark.
4. Leave the thinking mind behind. A good way to do this is when you’re in a half dreaming state. As soon as you wake up, just write…