Finding the Way Back: Place and Space in the Ecological Poetry of Joy Harjo

Muscogee Creek Joy Harjo in many ways serves as a representative example of an ecological poet. For one thing she, like other ecological poets, offers a vision of the world that values the interaction between two interdependent and seemingly paradoxical desires. In the words of cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, these two desires are (1) to create place, making a conscious and concerted effort to know the more-than-human world around them; and (2) to value space, recognizing the extent to which that very world is ultimately unknowable. In other words, most of the project undertaken by Harjo falls somewhere within these two objectives: to know the world and to recognize its ultimate unknowability. And like most ecological poets, much of what Harjo finds so unsettling about the contemporary world has to do with a modern lack of place- and space-consciousness. The ecological poetry of Joy Harjo is discussed.