All through the poems within the pages of “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings” there are themes of music and instruments being played. I think maybe music speaks to Joy Harjo. She is a noted musician herself afterall as well as a poet and Native American member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. Her poems speak of the sorrow of the Native Americans, and her references to music tend to be always about the Blues sometimes Jazz but always with a tinge of melancholy. Her words speak to the reader’s heart and sensibility. She presents rights and wrongs all within the same stanzas beautifully blending good, bad, happy, sad as though she is stirring paint then dipping her quill in that paint to form the ink that is the source and meaning of her works. Beautiful to the point you can feel her pain in tangible ways. She offers word pictures, from describing loveless joining of two lonely people searching for something they hope to gain from each other that leaves the reader feeling Joy Harjo must believe in love she just can’t seem to find it. She speaks of Time often in her poetry as though they are friends, even colleagues in a way that lets you know her soul is communicating with Time reaching out to grasp always what it cannot have but who promises a day of reckoning when all answers will be revealed. Her works cry out to be read aloud and I would very much like to hear her read them some day. She captures so many emotions and so many concepts and serves them to the reader. She bares her emotion as though she is peeling her skin back to show all that is beneath. Her heart beat is the constant drum rhythm you feel from this book. Once you start you won’t be able to put it down. She weaves what was with what is like a beautiful tapestry then she silently walks away in deerskin moccasins. Very good read.
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