ABSTRACT
Joy Harjo’s poetry attempts to resolve polarities to bring this world into balance. She emphasizes the concept of androgyny, an acceptance of the male and female within each person and all of nature, as essential to wholeness. As Harjo stated when interviewed by Joseph Bruchac:
Native American experience has often been bitter…. I like to think that bitter experience can be used to move the world. We’re human beings ultimately, and when it’s all together, there won’t be these categories…we will be accepted for what we are and not divided. (96)
Since the publication in 1979 of What Moon Drove Me to This? Harjo’s poetry has received attention and acclaim from literary critics such as Paula Gunn Allen and Andrew Wiget, and her work has been included in all major anthologies of Native American poetry. In 1989, Bill Moyers featured Harjo and her work in his television series Power of the Word.
