Ada Limón & Joy Harjo: Everything I Learned From The World's Greatest Poets | How I Write

Summary

How I Write: Ada Limón & Joy Harjo – Everything I Learned From The World's Greatest Poets

Episode Overview

This episode of How I Write features a heartfelt, wide-ranging conversation between host David Perell and two former U.S. Poets Laureate: Ada Limón and Joy Harjo. Together, they explore the mystique of poetry—the act of listening beyond words, the role of rhythm and silence, the spiritual roots of language, the meaning of poetic voice, and the enduring power of metaphor. For anyone enchanted by how great poems are made—or curious about how to write with more depth, resonance, and presence—this episode is a masterclass in the hidden mechanics and lifestyle of poets.

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Deep Listening: Writing as Receiving (01:11–10:49)

Key Points:

• Both Limón and Harjo stress that genuine art comes from receiving the world rather than forcing meaning onto it.
• “So much of writing is receiving. I think we have a misconception that making art is always about making... In reality, much of what we do as artists is to receive the world...” – Ada Limón [01:11]
• Joy Harjo compares the earth’s resonance to music, asserting that every being and element carries its own unique rhythm.
• The influence of media and the loss of immersive attention due to technology.
• Silence is revealed not as emptiness but as alive with ambient sound and presence.

Memorable Quotes:

• “If you look at the Earth from a spaceship... Earth is one being, and it has its own song and its own vibration...” – Joy Harjo [01:59]
• “For me, it feels like there’s so much about... we don’t have a lot of silence in the world... I have to listen to my own music or the music that is present.” – Ada Limón [05:52]
• “Silence can feel like it’s whitewashing, right? ... But really it’s about hearing the music that is constantly alive in the world.” – Ada Limón [10:21]

Notable Moments:

• Joy Harjo on media and attention: “When my dreams started flipping quickly by, like videos, like reels or TikToks, I knew that was the end of that for me, because... it was interfering with my thought process and lengthy thought process.” [03:12]
• Both poets on needing solitude and time away from noise to write meaningfully.

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Rhythm, Silence, and the Body: Poetry’s Musical Roots (08:10–14:16)

Key Points:

• The rhythm of a poem is an organic force, sometimes pre-existing the words themselves.
• Both poets cannot listen to music while writing (it hijacks their inner music), though they acknowledge some writers can create with musical background as a shield or scaffold.
• Harjo draws metaphors between bodily rhythms, natural rhythms, and poetic rhythm.
• Practicing solitude is essential for both poets.

Memorable Quotes:

• “Rhythm is crucial to error. It’s everything. It’s behind everything—your organs, even every cell...” – Joy Harjo [09:05]
• “To lose track of time is such a gift and difficult.” – Ada Limón [20:34]

Notable Moments:

• Perell’s story about “super loud” silence in Patagonia [11:03], highlighting how awareness transforms perception.

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Finding and Honing One's "Voice" (13:03–19:00)

Key Points:

• Joy Harjo contends, “Maybe my voice cultivated me because I feel like it’s the same voice... whether it’s the saxophone or speaking or singing, it’s the same voice.” [13:20]
• Voice, for both poets, is a deep, essential quality—less about style and more about discovering who you truly are.
• Learning to listen deeply to the self is as important as listening to the world.
• Mere trends or literary fashions don't define or constrain their work.

Memorable Quotes:

• “I’m not super comfortable with the word soul, but it is in that realm... the usness, the isness of this material body at this time and space.” – Ada Limón [14:40]
• “I always wrote the way I wrote, which didn’t always make it easy to be seen or to be understood even. But that was just why I was doing what I needed to do.” – Joy Harjo [17:51]

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Clock Time vs. Eternal Time: Poetic Presence (18:08–20:56)

Key Points:

• Both poets reflect on the constrictions of “clock time” versus the timeless perspective present in traditional and indigenous cultures.
• Limón expresses how sacred it feels to lose track of time while writing; Harjo mourns the way technology eats human attention.

Memorable Quotes:

• “Clock time is so recent. It’s so small.” – Joy Harjo [18:17]
• “To lose track of time is such a gift and difficult.” – Ada Limón [20:34]

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The Reader’s Experience: Approaching and Appreciating a Poem (20:56–26:16)

Key Points:

• Reading poetry requires revisiting, repeated listening, and openness. Meaning and resonance deepen over time, like with a beloved song.
• The modern attention economy makes it harder to give poems the space and time they need.
• Contemporary poetry, read aloud or performed, connects powerfully—even as print poetry sections shrink.

Memorable Quotes:

• “Poetry takes repetition... Even now, I can read a poem and sort of wonder about it and then read it again... and it opens up more.” – Ada Limón [21:30]
• “It’s like listening to jazz... It works best the more you have in your pocket, you know—the more skill, the more craft you have, because you’re listening to...” – Joy Harjo [22:49]
• “Just listen to this poem. The way you listen to a song. This is song on paper… Who knows what [Hotel California] means and who cares? It’s really about the experience.” – Joy Harjo [25:36]

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Form, Syntax, and the Physicality of Poetry (26:16–30:23)

Key Points:

• Limón and Harjo break down how poems work on the page—the line break, punctuation, and the smallest units of sound.
• A poem’s instructions for reading are embedded in its structure.
• The line, more than the sentence, guides rhythm and meaning.

Memorable Quotes:

• “You don’t read poetry to get the meaning of the sentence… It’s for the music, for the experience…” – Ada Limón [26:16]
• “Everything has to be on the page. It’s not waiting for music to join it, you know—it's not waiting for the percussion to come in. The percussion has to be the periods or the ellipses…” – Ada Limón [30:04]
• “That’s the rhythm section.” – Joy Harjo [30:19]

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Poetry as Embodied Art: Reading, Sound, and Memory (30:35–37:49)

Key Points:

• Poetry’s oldest roots are in community and ritual—poetry is sung, danced, embodied.
• The experience of hearing or reciting poems aloud is transformative; embodiment intensifies their effect.
• Cross-cultural and even non-verbal forms (like ASL poetry) show poetry’s sensory dimension.

Memorable Quotes:

• “Poetry is connected to land places in the earth. You could have star patterns in it... but you’re dancing it, you know, you’re also singing it...” – Joy Harjo [30:47]
• “When people like poetry, but they've never heard it out loud, I think, no, no, no. You need to hear it, you know, or you need to experience in a sensorial way.” – Ada Limón [32:30]
• “It’s this experience of looking at someone as they have a thought in their head of, whoa, I didn’t know language could do that.” – Interviewer/David Perell [34:16]

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The Spell of Language: Metaphor, Lushness, and Mystery (37:49–45:08)

Key Points:

• Poetic language offers mystery and lushness, transforming the mundane into revelation.
• The essential function of metaphor and the limitations of utilitarian everyday language.
• Poems can make familiar language magical through arrangement, sound, and image.

Memorable Quotes:

• “To reimagine [language] as an ecstatic, ethereal, you know, transitory thing that occurs in a moment, more like spell or magic...” – Ada Limón [37:27]
• “Poetry is essentially metaphor… It’s like the real world, but it’s this or it’s this, and it’s also this. And here’s one contradiction. And here’s one. And yet we can hold it all right here.” – Joy Harjo [38:11]
• “It’s a beautiful reminder that language can be used for good.” – Ada Limón [40:35]
• “To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower, to hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour...” – William Blake, quoted by Interviewer [40:35]

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Inspiration, Influence, and Process: The Poet’s Toolkit (42:52–45:08)

Key Points:

• Remaining curious and open is the heart of creativity; gratitude toward poetic ancestors sustains the work.
• Both poets reflect on poetic influences shaping their writing, naming Galway Kinnell and John Ashbery among others.
• Editors often want to “flatten” poetic language, but poets defend sound and sense over grammar.

Memorable Quotes:

• “The trick is the word curious. Is to remain curious.” – Joy Harjo [42:52]
• “And that’s… sound sense. Because it’s not. It will flatten the sentence out… it has a sound sense that works with the perception.” – Joy Harjo [44:17]
• “Poetry sometimes resists the same kind of copy editing.” – Ada Limón [45:08]

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Emotion, Trust, and Awareness: The Depths of Poetic Experience (45:08–47:12)

Key Points:

• Writing poetry is like a trust fall into emotion (Perell), but Limón complicates this by suggesting it’s a process of recognizing the deep emotions you already carry.
• Awareness, solitude, and honesty with oneself are essential.

Notable Quotes:

• “It’s not always just a trust fall… sometimes it’s just realizing you are in it.” – Ada Limón [46:08]
• “There’s a way in which we move through the world and someone says, how are you? And we say, fine. And that’s the contract… And then there’s a way that when you are alone… you will recognize what you are grieving and that it is there and that it is part of you...” – Ada Limón [46:22]

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Closing Reflection

This conversation demystifies poetry without diminishing its magic—revealing the lived, felt processes behind artful language. Limón and Harjo invite listeners to slow down, listen deeply, stay curious, and let poetry (their own and others’) shape the way they move through the world.

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Selected Further Reading:

• Joy Harjo’s poem “Shapeshifter”
• Ada Limón’s recent collections
• Poems by Galway Kinnell, John Ashbery, Emily Dickinson, and William Blake

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For Listeners Who Want More:

• Read poems aloud.
• Return to old favorites; let meaning change over time.
• Stay curious, honest, and gently attentive—to yourself, to language, to the world.

Transcript

[Interviewer]

This episode has two guests, not one. Ada Limone and Joy Harjo. And they're the two most recent poet laureates for the United States of America. They're like the secretaries of rhythm and rhyme. Poetry is one of the oldest art forms. Right. It goes back to the Greeks with singing and dancing, people memorizing the wisdom of a society. But now if you ask the average person about poetry, they'll be like, I don't really read poetry. It sounds too much like school. We talked about that. We also talked about how to use metaphors in your writing, how to put words to emotions that are beyond words, and then also how to listen to nature, God, the divine, whatever it is, how to really listen. And this conversation, it's what how I write is all about. I love interviewing the poets. If these are the kinds of conversations that you want to hear more of, well, you know, what to do. Like the show, follow it, subscribe to the YouTube channel. But also, I'd really appreciate if you shared it with a friend. All right, let's get to it. I want to start off by talking about listening, because there's something that I sensed in both of your work, that there's this deep practice of listening beyond words that is core to your work.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

I think so much of writing is receiving. I think we have a misconception that making art is always about making or putting something into the world.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

But.

[Ada Limone]

But in reality, much of what we do as artists is to receive the world, to look, to listen, all the senses alive and to be present in that listening. And I think that's for. At least for me, that's where my best poems come from, is when I'm really listening to the world and what it's offering, as opposed to constantly trying to translate that into my own experience. But to really listen to the experience that is the vibration of the planet.

[Joy Harjo]

Yes. I mean, if you look at the Earth, it's all about perspective, and it's all about vibration. Or if you look at the Earth from, say, a spaceship or from. If you're in your dreams and you look at it from way out there. Earth is one being, and it has its own song and its own vibration, but it's made up of everyone's, you know, everyone's. I don't want to say vibration. It's resonance. You know, that everyone has a resonance. It's rhythm. I know when I write, it's about listening. It's always about listening and not imposing myself. I mean, we're who we are. We're all Personalities, we're who we are. But it's about listening and translating. Sometimes it's like translation from what you're hearing to using your craft to make it into something so that the coolest things that will happen in, say, a poem or a song or things that just come through, and then I'll say, thank you. That's really cool.

[Interviewer]

Is there an experience of listening that stands out for either of you?

[Joy Harjo]

It's. You know, I think it helps. Like, we were talking about trees earlier with Tracy. But, you know, being around trees, being out in the natural world, assists with that. If you're on your phone, if you're constantly interrupted by your addiction to your phone or to the Internet, that breaks up. That breaks up the resonance. I like my dreams. I've been a kind of dreamer my whole life. And when my dreams, and they're usually long, you know, they're longer. They have a certain kind of quality that's a lot like poetry. That's a lot like the creative process. But when my dreams started flipping quickly by, like, videos, like reels or TikToks, I knew that was the end of that for me, because, you know, I did not want it. It was interfering with my thought. It was interfering with my thought process and lengthy thought process.

[Interviewer]

So your dreams, you're saying, begin to change based on the. As a response to the media you are consuming.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah. And the kinds of media, when things are quick. It's like if you read a novel or you read a poem or short story, or you look at a painting or you paint or music. Like, we used to lay around and listen to LPs and stuff, and you were more immersed in the music. It would be in the room. It wouldn't be just in your ear solo, but it would be in the room. So the room is listening, too. So everybody's listening. So then what happens? Our experience of the world has shifted because of this interference. Yes, it's cool. Yes, you can talk to people and get information all over the world any time of day. But what is your relationship? You have no relationship. It's like when you come back to writing or to poetry. It's a different kind of listening in which it's interactive. I mean, there's listening, but I think even listening is interactive, even as you're quiet. But, see, I'm thinking as I go, but it's because I hadn't thought of that. It's interacting. What are you interacting with? There are resonances when you start to listen. That's when you can hear the Plants. That's when you can hear the rocks. That's when you can hear, you know, that's when you can hear what's going on in the beneath. The beneath? Yeah, that's my short answer.

[Ada Limone]

No, I completely. I co sign that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. What about it?

[Ada Limone]

Well, for me it feels like there's so much about we don't have a lot of silence in the world. And so when I am writing poems or writing, making something and I, I can't listen to music when I do it because I it. I love music, but I will be taken away by it. So I have to listen to my own music or the, or the music that is present. And at one moment I was writing something and I was working on a poem and it was a longer poem, which is always fun when that happens. And you know it's going to be long and I, it's. You start to get a different kind of music that is patient. And I went downstairs to get tea and I came back upstairs and I thought, what was I just listening to? And I really thought, was it a podcast? Was it? And then I realized it was my own poem. It was the poem that I had been listening to, but the sound was so loud in my own body that it felt like it was coming from outside. And so when I sat back down, I was like, oh, this is what I was listening to.

[Joy Harjo]

Oh, cool.

[Ada Limone]

And that was when I recognized that listening was so intricate and so important to my own art making process.

[Joy Harjo]

You know, I can't listen to. It's to write now. I've done some things writing to music. I mean, I write music too, and I'm a musician.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, but I like listening to your flute music.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah, but writing to, you know, writing a song is different. Yeah, I know. I have to be on a panel next week in Nashville is much different from writing poetry. And if I'm writing poetry or even prose, I, I can't listen. I get taken away by the music. And it always, it intrigues me because Leslie Silko, a novelist, she's also a poet, short story writer. So she listens to music loud and it build. It's a kind of wall, it makes a wall of sound behind what she can write.

[Interviewer]

How about rhythm in writing? Like with you, Ada? I'm thinking like the rhythm of a horse. Like a horse gallop. And with you, like the rhythm of sound and music.

[Ada Limone]

Yeah, I mean, I think that that comes through the poem itself. And sometimes you hear the poem before you start writing it. And there can be a phrase or there's something that happens that alerts you to a different kind of music that is thrilling or is, for the lack of a better word, true. And you think, oh, this. This sound is interesting to me. And I want to figure that out. And so I. For me, there's a moment in which the poem makes a rhythm. And I can't tell if I've translated a rhythm that I've heard into the poem or if the poem has made it on its own and I then have teased it out or amplified it, but I'm not always sure.

[Joy Harjo]

Now, rhythm is crucial to error. It's everything. It's behind everything, your organs. I mean, every organ and even every cell has. You know, it's held together by rhythm. We're held together by rhythm. The heart goes. Loses its rhythm. That's the end of it. But that rhythm runs through the organs, all of the systems in your body, all the earth systems, the rocks. You know, it just depends on how attuned your perception is. And I think poets, especially when it comes to language over any of the other word. Literary arts, are especially attuned, I think, to especially attune. I mean, some writers, too, some writers who are very. Not literary. There's just some. You know, it's just a kind of attunement to it. There are people who take care of plants who are like that. I mean, there are people who can listen to an engine. You know, I came up with a father and brothers who were mechanics and stuff. You can listen to an engine and hear it run. And I have a little bit of that. And I can tell what's wrong. Yeah, but it's. Yeah, it's kind of a rhythm thing.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

And I think that goes back to silence, too, is that people think we're looking for silence, but really you're looking to hear what's already happening, what's alive and what's moving in the world, you know, Because I think that silence can feel like it's whitewashing, right. That we're. That it's supposed to be. But really it's about hearing the music that is constantly alive in the world.

[Interviewer]

Right, right. As if silence is depth, not nothingness.

[Joy Harjo]

Because it's always. It's. It's a lie. We're a living being. And I just had a deja vu moment, really. Have you this before when you were saying. When you were saying.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah, okay, good.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I had this moment in Patagonia last. Last winter. And we were sitting. We went out for a hike, and we were basically in this giant canyon. Giant canyon. Magnificent. And we go out.

[Joy Harjo]

Argentina or Arizona.

[Interviewer]

In Argentina.

[Joy Harjo]

Okay.

[Interviewer]

In Argentina. So we're out there, and then the guy goes, hey, we're gonna sit in silence for a few minutes. And what was interesting to your point about the depth is when you start sitting in silence, the first thing that pops in your mind is it's quiet. And then you sit and you sit and you sit and you're like, whoa, it is loud. It is loud. There's the eagles chirping. There's the waterfalls falling. There's the glacier snow melting and falling into the rocks. And actually, the silence was super loud. And I was like, whoa, this is crazy.

[Ada Limone]

I don't recognize that.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

When I was in high school, I was so attuned to noise that I could hide anything with my hair. So I would not put in headphones. I would put in earplugs just to dampen it so that I could kind of move through society. Because I was so sensitive to the loudness of teenage people. You know, I was 15, and it was just. It was so loud. And so I just. I had to, like, dampen it a little bit. And I think it's because I am attuned to the music of the world.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah, I get that. I always like to spend a lot of time alone, even as a little kid, even when I was really, really small, just for sanity.

[Ada Limone]

That's the best part about being a poet.

[Joy Harjo]

Mm.

[Ada Limone]

I mean, you make music, which often involves other people, which is beautiful. But really, one of the things that I love about being a poet is that you can do it alone.

[Joy Harjo]

I like that too. I spend a lot of time, a lot of time alone.

[Interviewer]

How have you thought about cultivating your voice? I've seen what you said. Joy is. When I was younger, I felt like I didn't have a voice of sorts. I don't wanna put words into your mouth. But then now it seems like that's something you've really cultivated both in music and in writing. And how did you go about doing that?

[Joy Harjo]

I don't think I went about cultivating my voice. Maybe my voice cultivated me because I feel like it's the same voice. Whether it's kind of timeless, whether it's the saxophone or the speaking or singing, it's the same voice. And I guess my perception of it or experience of it shifts, you know, with experiences and with age and so on, but I don't know. I know a lot of young students when I taught were looking for their voice, and I said, well, it's right. You know, it's already there. Your voice is there. I guess what they really are trying to say is, how do I find what's unique, really? So they're questioning what's unique to me or my own expression, you know, how do I develop that?

[Interviewer]

And what do you tell them?

[Joy Harjo]

Well, you just learn. You get to know yourself, which means getting to know the world at the same time. Always questioning and investigating with curiosity the world, why you think a certain way, what your belief systems are made of.

[Ada Limone]

Where your mind travels to and where.

[Joy Harjo]

It likes to go.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

Where it obsesses, where it feels safest.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

Where, you know, all of those things. I mean, that's part of, you know, voice is really. You know, it's the. It's the underneath thing, Right. It's the thing that's always been us. And so it's weird because I don't. I'm not super comfortable with the word soul, but it is in that realm, the ethereal voice that we talk about in poetry really is the usness, the isness of this material body at this time and space. And so to know it is to not just listen to the world, right. But. But to listen to the entity that is yourself and to not censor it. You know, to not think what is appropriate, bright for this moment. What are the things that have been taught. Taught to me that is the way that someone should move into the world. Right. I think when I'm alone and I'm quiet for a while, right. I'm silent and listening. What's the first. What are the words that come up? I'm always interested in that. If I've been alone for a long time, what are the words that come up? You know, and sometimes it's just, I'm sorry. And I think, who am I apologizing to? And then I think sometimes it's just thank you. And then sometimes it's just, I want to sing. I like songs come back. Music comes back. And it's not even music that I know or songs that I know, but songs that exist somewhere in me. But I think that that's part of it, is that it's not necessarily a voice.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah. And some voices, so to speak, fit an age and some not. And I've always aware that I don't want my voice or my theme or something just to be caught in a particular fashion of the times. And yet there are voices or people who are part of. That's their place. That's what they do. But I know. And how do I know it. I just know that that's not where mine fits. And I've tried to do that and it doesn't work. And it gets harder. When so much of what you see in the contemporary poetry world is so I hear about it or I watch it, I don't delve into it is so youth focused and so focused on trends. It can be. Not always, but even poetry can get really focused on trends and groups and ideas, certain theoretical notions and so on that, you know, and that's another whole realm. But I don't deal with that. I haven't. I mean, I always wrote the way I wrote, which didn't always make it easy to be seen or to understood be understood even. But that was just why I was doing what I needed to do.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ada Limone]

And you were speaking to. You were speaking back and are speaking back to a longer period of time.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

And I think that that is really something that I've always admired about your work is that sort of, you know, it's before clock time.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah. Clock time is so recent.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

I know.

[Joy Harjo]

It's so small.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Joy Harjo]

And that's what I tell. Especially young native writers or natives. We think. I said think about it this way. You know, it seems like we always have to deal with colonization and history. But you know what, if you look at Columbus didn't even land in North America. But if you look at the time versus eternal time and how long our people have been here and had our culture, this time is like. You can't even see between. It's like that it's here, but it will go away because we've been here much longer and we will be here after.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Joy Harjo]

And we know that.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

I think that's something.

[Joy Harjo]

That's a tricky moment, you know. Yeah, yeah.

[Ada Limone]

Because everything, when you. When you have that view and I can have it for moments and then it goes away.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah, true.

[Ada Limone]

You know, I have this moment and I feel more comfortable in it.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah. And I think that's true for peoples all over the world too. Because this kind of clock time or industrial, you know, talk about industrialization, a lot of that came about. You know, it was certainly developed intensely around the time of industrial revolution and so on. But, you know, it's. I mean, we've had. There's been, you know, clocks that measure the sun.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Joy Harjo]

But to be bound, we haven't, you know, we're so bound by it.

[Interviewer]

Well, one thing that's nice with clock time is the time of day really influences it. I've been thinking a lot about how there's a bigger difference between 2:28 on a Tuesday and two. There's a bigger difference in those times between 2:00am and 5:00am on a Saturday night. Like, yeah, there's three hours, but somehow, like, the time goes away. But if it's like 2:28 versus 2:30 on a Tuesday, like, I need to know what time it is. Those are completely different states. But if I'm just with my buddies on a Saturday night, it's way too late. Who cares?

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

And yet you can look at 2:28 and be like, I've got two minutes to do something before 2:30 strikes.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And it.

[Ada Limone]

And it has to accomplish something on my list.

[Interviewer]

Wrangling holes on our attention. And it's hard to get that deep, cultivated, focused presence.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

To lose track of time is such a gift and difficult.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah. Because of all of this Internet. And so all of these things meant to make our life easier. Like the cell phone, it eats. They eat time. I mean, they eat up our time.

[Interviewer]

But also, you're talking about the producer side of what cell phones have done. Also from the consumer side, it completely changes our relationship with poetry. Because when I read a poem the first time every time, I'm like, I don't get it. And then I gotta come back to it, and I gotta come back to it and I gotta come back to it. And it's not just reading and rereading, but listening and sort of the multimodal nature of poetry. So from a consumer perspective, it's so hard to have that sustained attention so that we can come to appreciate a poem.

[Ada Limone]

Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, poetry takes repetition, I think, for. I mean, I'm someone who reads a lot of poetry and we've devoted our lives to poetry. And still to this day, I can read a poem and sort of wonder about it and then read it again and wonder more deeply about it and then read it again and it opens up more. And I mean, it really. It's the way you listen to a song over and over again, and that song shifts. And how you feel on a certain day shifts that song. And the way you feel in your body, or what happened to you then shifts that song. You know, that's the same with the poem. There are times where I've. I've been really resistant to poems that I thought, oh, you know, I'm not a big fan of John Ashbery. And I have friends that would always say, you know, you're gonna like him. And I'm like, Oh, I just. I just don't. And then, you know, recently or, you know, in the last 10 years, I was revisiting a lot of his work and just loving it. So I think, you know, your. Your own body shifts and you think, oh, this is the time for this poem. And some of it was taking the time was that I didn't have the patience for the abundance of his work.

[Joy Harjo]

It's like listening to jazz.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah, exactly.

[Joy Harjo]

And that's what I love about jazz, is the places you can. As a performer, I love to improv, and it's the places you can go. And especially if you're improving, you have to be. You have to listen and be alert. And you also. It works best. The more you have in your pocket, you know, the more skill, the more craft you have, because you're listening to.

[Ada Limone]

A lot of places, and that's like.

[Joy Harjo]

Listening to John Ashbery at this point. You have more craft under you, so you can hear more what he's doing.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Joy Harjo]

Which is similar to jazz. His poetry is similar to how some jazz works.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Joy Harjo]

Like a jazz. In the way he moves with phrasing.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

And I think I was. I was impatient.

[Joy Harjo]

You know, I get impatient with him, but still.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ada Limone]

And so I think that that that's something that we lose a little bit when we don't have the book in front of us or the poem in front of us. Instead, we think, oh, we just look at it on our phone really quick and see if we understand this poem.

[Interviewer]

So when you say that you read poetry, what do you do? You just flip through them. You're like, oh, I'll do this one. And I must force myself 20 minutes. Like, how does that actually. How does a poet read a poem?

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

Isn't that funny that that's a question?

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

It's true, though.

[Interviewer]

I don't know.

[Ada Limone]

I have a stack of. I mean, I have a library of books that I'm constantly pulling out. Sometimes I just need a certain poet, and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I go, this is not what I need right now. And I put it back, and then I pick something else up, like listen to music almost.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah, the same thing. It's very similar.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

And then sometimes I just will keep that stack on my desk. And then sort of when I feel like I've moved on, I need to put those back, and. But then they come in back in rotation, you know, and then sometimes it's new work and beautiful. There's so many amazing contemporary poets. Oh, yeah, there are that I'm constantly gobbling up their new work and all of that, but. But I. I'm still a book person. I like to read the actual book.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah, I like the books.

[Interviewer]

I'm always surprised when I'm prepping for these interviews. I go to bookstores and I look around and the poetry session is always small. And I'm like, man, you know, is poetry dying in text?

[Joy Harjo]

A bit.

[Interviewer]

And then I go on YouTube and the poetry readings on YouTube, just so popular. So popular. People love listening to poetry. But it's funny because I think back to school, and it was like, read this poem. What does it mean? Break it down.

[Ada Limone]

What are they doing? As if poetry had an answer, right? It's as if life had an answer.

[Joy Harjo]

That's what I always tell students. I said if in elementary school, if the teachers always hated the poetry time, but the poetry unit. But if they would have said, just listen to this poem. The way you listen to a song. This is song on paper. Just listen to it like that. Now what do you hear? And now listen to it again, just like you would. You get more out of listening to. And I always use Hotel California. Like, who knows what that means and who cares? You know what I mean? It's really about the experience. The experience of it. Because we don't. We put words together. If we wanted to make exact, literal logic sense, we wouldn't be writing poetry.

[Ada Limone]

Yeah, you don't read poetry to get the meaning of the sentence. You know, you read poetry for the music and for the experience and for the. The multitude of meetings that it offers, that the line break offers.

[Joy Harjo]

It gets back to rhythm. Yeah, and sound sense and open sounds. At the end of a phrase, it's. Phrasing a sentence is a phrase. Like if you play like four bars or something, you know, it's sort of like four bars is kind of the standard, if you think about it, which is kind of the standard in songwriting, too. It's like four bars, and you get to the end of that. And if the last syllables say open, that leads in kind of a certain shape, or if it's percussive and ends, you know, if there's three syllables, I mean, it's all. I mean, you could lay it out all mathematically. There's a way, but there's just something, you know, that, you know, you'll hear it once you start breaking down. Listening to songs like songwriters like Rosanne Cash or other songwriters and poets, everybody's kind of got their own signature, their own feel around things like that. And then you watch over a lifetime of, like you said, like, if Emily Dickinson. And I don't know what you've discovered about her changing, as I haven't studied her enough to watch that. But it's interesting over a life, a long period of a poet or a songwriter or a singer or, you know, to watch. Hell, usually there are themes set into place. I mean, things that we engage with.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ada Limone]

And I think that everyone has a relationship with the sentence or syntax in a different way. And that changes as people age, too. But when we think about, you know, a poem, one of its signature things. It's not always the case with a prose poem, but is that the sentence and the line are interacting so that the line is breaking in a different way. Right. The line breaks the sentence, and we start with the really small units. We start with the sound, and we start with syllables, and then we go to the word, and then we go to the clause, and then we go to the line break, and then we go to the sentence. Like, we really start in these very small units. And so it's unlike if you're working in prose, where you just think, okay, I'm working. The sentence is the unit, but we really begin in the sound even before we get to the syllable. And so you're constantly having a different relationship with the sentence. When people say, well, poems can have sentences, sure. But the elemental quality of it is different than working just with a sentence.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. What I'm hearing you say is that there's an aesthetic quality beyond the words. So in the. When you listen to a poem, there's the musicality. When you read the poem, the aesthetic experience has to do with the line break and the way it looks.

[Ada Limone]

It's the same. They're united. The line break tells you how to read the poem.

[Joy Harjo]

Which are the pauses or the silences? Sure, yeah.

[Ada Limone]

So that's the instructions on how to read the poem. So the line break is going to tell you something. The clause and whether or not you're using punctuation is going to tell you something. Right. The sentence will tell you some. All of those things will tell you how to read the poem. And so the music, you know, Joy has said this, and I've said this before, but it's the. It is like a song, except all the music has to be on the page. Everything has to be on the page.

[Joy Harjo]

Right.

[Ada Limone]

And so all. Everything is there. It's not waiting for music to join it, you know, it's not waiting for the percussion to come in. The percussion has to be the periods or the ellipses or whatever it is, but. Or the sajuras. But that's.

[Joy Harjo]

That's the rhythm section.

[Ada Limone]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

The repetition, often the baseline, you know, so that's the way a poem is made, is also the way the poem tells you how to read it.

[Interviewer]

How does singing and dancing factor into all this? Because poetry is as old as it gets. But it wasn't delivered just in words on a page. It was spoken, it was danced out. It was a natural.

[Joy Harjo]

Hula is a good. You know, I lived in Hawaii over 11 years, and I trained some in hula, mostly in canoe racing. But it's poetry. I mean, the root of it is poetry. And there's music. And this is true with. Yeah, it's true with cultures all over the world. Yeah. It's dance. It's images. It's their dance. They're dancing. Poetry. Poetry is connected to land places in the earth. You could have star patterns in it. There's all kinds of things that could go in there, but you're dancing it, you know, you're also singing it, you know, you're. You know, it's all there. But you can find that in a lot of, you know, a lot of the classics and indigenous cultures and all over the world, is that the music and the poetry and the dance are all part of each other. They're all linked.

[Ada Limone]

And it's also a way of remembering, you know, remembering and honoring a moment in time or. Or honoring somebody, you know, elegies, love.

[Joy Harjo]

Poems, or reinforcing a template of cultural philosophical understanding.

[Interviewer]

In what way?

[Joy Harjo]

In that. I mean, what is culture? I mean, how do we know who we are in a culture? You know, human beings, it's our. It's our arts, it's our designs. It's in it, you know, it's in our literature. Whether it's oral literature or literature that's been written down, it's in our symbols, it's in the story structures that tell us who we are and why we're here and how we got here and where we're going. That's all part of it.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

And it feels, you know, the embodiment of a poem. Like when someone reads a poem to hear it out loud is. That's my favorite part. You know, I'm someone who loves to go to poetry readings. I love to listen to someone read their poems. It's a really moving experience. And it feels to me that when people like poetry, but they've never heard it out loud, I think, no, no, no. You need to hear it, you know, or you need to experience in a sensorial way. And, you know, I think about. Even when you have ASL poets that are deaf and they. And it's. But it's. The embodiment of the poem is in asl, and so it's like the sign language is part of that embodiment.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

And so I think that there is something to be said for not just the words on the page, but that it becomes a. A fully expressed thing in the body.

[Joy Harjo]

So there was somebody in our signing, in my signing line, who came up and said her husband is in the. He's a medical doctor and teaches somewhere, you know, in the medical field, and said he had never really got why people like poetry and anything. Of course, she dragged him to our event, and after hearing us read our poems, he said, I get it. He said, I get it now. I get it. And he was really excited and turned on. He says, I get it.

[Ada Limone]

That's great. Yeah. But I think that sometimes people need to have that experience.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. It's crazy because I've memorized not that many poems, but enough that I'll sometimes recite poems if I'm at dinner with somebody. And it's funny because we'll be chatting, blah, blah, blah, and they're in a completely normal state. And then I'll go into poetry mode. And the tenor of my voice doesn't change that much, but the quality of the words does. And it's almost like they're arrested by the words. It's like they've been captured, and you can see it in their eyes. They light up, and all of a sudden they go, and they're like, there with you. And it's this experience of looking at someone as they have a thought in their head of, whoa, I didn't know language could do that. I didn't know it had that power to cast a spell on me that fast. What?

[Joy Harjo]

I remember the first time. It was the first time I went out of the country for a poetry thing in Amsterdam in the late 70s. And one of the readings was by the deaf poet Linton Quezzi Johnson from Jamaica. And he didn't have his band. He was just reading his poetry. And we were all moving, you know, like. We were like reggae just. It was just with the cadence of his voice and what he was saying and how he was saying it. And pretty soon we were all just like. We were all dancing. But it was. He wasn't singing it, you know, it was just the. You know, the rhythm of the Words and the way he was followed. The. You know, it was like the rhythm of the music and which came first? Da da da, da da. Or was it. Did it have to do with the ocean there and the way that, you know, it was. You know, it's interesting that after that really affected me to hear that and to hear him.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

I feel like that's. Sometimes people will just throw a poetry quote out there. And even then I think, oh, like, I get even. Just a small line, you know, like, I was the Emily Dickinson poem that keeps coming to me. And I have used it before, but it's that not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door. And you just. This idea of, you know, it just.

[Joy Harjo]

Throws you into deep space. Immediately.

[Ada Limone]

Immediately.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I've that experience with. A lot of times at baseball games, they'll play America the Beautiful and God Bless America in the seventh inning. And it just. It just completely moves me, like, from sea to shining sea. God bless America. Land that I love Stand beside her and guide her. And some of my favorite moments as a kid, some of my favorite. I was at the Yankees game two weeks ago, and it just. Those words, they just melt me. And it's. But it's beyond. It's like you lose your capacity for control or something when the words are really pure and well written. You're kind of like, all right, let's go for the ride. I'm no longer in control.

[Ada Limone]

Well, we spend so much time in our lives with language's utilitarian tool.

[Interviewer]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Ada Limone]

And it becomes a blunt object. And to reimagine it as an ecstatic, ethereal, you know, transitory thing that occurs in a moment, more like spell or magic or.

[Joy Harjo]

You can't do that in texting, though. I've heard there's texting novels and this and that, and people are going to, you know, do whatever, but usually you don't. Texting doesn't lend itself naturally or easily to metaphor.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Why metaphor? Why. Why do you focus on that word? Why does it hold so much gravity for you?

[Joy Harjo]

Poetry is essentially metaphor. It's. If you look. You think about poetry as a whole. Well, this is not as what it seems. Not as it seems. Or it's like. It could be like assembly. You know, poetry is like the real world, but it's this or it's this, and it's also this. And here's one contradiction. And here's one. And yet we can hold it all right here. And usually text messages are abbreviated. I've noticed several of the younger generation who are very well educated, who still don't punctuate or they don't always capitalize. I noticed that with people of my daughter's age too. Is that they. And it's because they've been texting. They text or even email, when email was more like. A lot of people are more cryptic in that or pared down when they send emails. They don't write often. Do not write regular sentences.

[Ada Limone]

Yeah, and it's that sense of. Again, that idea of. I'm just trying to get something across. Yeah, right.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah. Instead of thinking about the meaning or the. It's just. Yeah, it's literal. It's literal. It's clock time writing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's clock time writing. It's like, okay, I just want to tell you to meet me here and let's do this. And it's focused on what we're going to do, what we need to buy. Where are you going? Just those, like you said, the ordinary everyday, you know, the ordinary every day.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ada Limone]

And that's. I think that's what's so interesting about hearing a poem, is that it is the language we use sometimes. It doesn't have. It doesn't even have to have any advanced vocabulary. You know, it might, you know, the poets have exceptional vocabularies, but it could just be using the words that we use all the time. And yet, because of its syntax, because of its rhythm, because of its cadence, because of the images it's building, because of its extreme clarity or its mystery or all of those things, it shifts and it's a. It's a beautiful reminder that language can be used for good.

[Interviewer]

I was on a walk with a friend. It was a tense conversation, so stressed out and anxious. We've been on a walk for like 35 minutes in this park, beautiful park, and we're getting to the very end. And this poem from William Blake just popped into my head. And it goes, to see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower, to hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. And I swear my eyes had been closed, my brain had been off, and all of a sudden the colors became like a Monet painting. And the world just became alive for me. And to your point, all of those words are normal words that everyone knows, but they've been rearranged in a fashion. Infinity, eternity, you know, palm of your hand, wildflower, just perfectly arranged where now it's like an awakening.

[Joy Harjo]

Once it pops into your mind, which is metaphor.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ada Limone]

And that's. We need that so much. Right. Is those moments where we can recommit to language in a way that feels life giving, as opposed to soul deadening.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah, yeah. I won't even go into chat. Chat. What is it? And AI and all that. That's another whole.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. The word that's been popping through my head has been this. The words have been lushness and mystery. Like, how do you. Great language. That's lush. I think about garden or a spring or an oasis, but also mystery that once you read a poem, memorize a poem, that's actually the beginning. It's an invitation to a deeper relationship that lives inside of you, that grows with you, and that a good poem often has both of those things.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ada Limone]

I think that there's so much that. It's not always about creating an abundance, but it is, at least for me, recognizing the strangeness of reality or the being. Being in wonderment at the world. You know, I'm curious at how we live, how we move.

[Joy Harjo]

And you have to. That's the. That's the trick is the word curious.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Joy Harjo]

Is to remain curious.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Joy Harjo]

And also to know where you've been and where you're going. I was thinking today, and I was reading that new poem, Shapeshifter, and I thought, I owe so much of this to Galway Canal, because the Doubt Flowers, I think that came out of his book, the Book of Nightmares. I was thinking that's where I got that from after I read it. And I was thinking about his poem the Bear, you know, which was a kind of shape shifting poem. I thought, okay.

[Ada Limone]

And tracking.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah, and tracking. I was thinking, thank you. I was sitting there. Thank you. Galway.

[Ada Limone]

That's so interesting, because when we were talking earlier, I started thinking about Galway Kinnell's poem Prayer, you know, whatever happens, whatever what is, is is what I want. Only that, but that. And I was thinking of all the words when I was thinking of, like, all the. That's all language that we know. And he's even using three is whatever happens, whatever what is, is is what I want.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Right.

[Ada Limone]

And that. But it's a different way of looking at that phrasing.

[Interviewer]

And I love that example because I'm drawn to that.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I'm like, wait, yeah, say that again. Say that again. And also I'm like, what does that. What does that mean?

[Ada Limone]

Right?

[Interviewer]

Like, I'm. It's like a dog on a leash. It's like I'm pulled towards that, you know?

[Joy Harjo]

And yet an editor would tell You. No, you can't do that. You can't do that because the shapeshifter's gonna be in the New Yorker at some point. And then they had a question about the way I had phrased even something. And they said, shouldn't this word go here? I said, no, this is sound sense.

[Ada Limone]

Yes. Thank you.

[Joy Harjo]

Because it's not. It will flatten the sentence out. Even ever. I can't remember. There were two words, ever, something. And grammatically, usually you would have it the other way, but it has a sound sense that works with the impers. You know, the perception. With perception of the deer.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Joy Harjo]

And they were fine. Okay. We get it. But, you know. But. Yeah. Because it takes it so long.

[Ada Limone]

It's very true.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

I mean, often the poetry editors and the editors of any magazine, you know, they are. They're copy editors, and they're wonderful, and they do great work, but poetry sometimes resists the same kind of copy editing.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah. It goes against that.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Part of what being a writer is, and probably especially a poet, is the sense of being willing to fall into an emotion and to. It's like a trust fall into an emotion and to just keep falling and falling and falling and to accept. Experience it at its depth and then try to some capacity, put that into words so that other people can experience the depth of emotion.

[Joy Harjo]

I just got a sense of, you know, they have those retreats they take people on, so they learn how to trust or they have to drop. You could do that for poets. You learn how to trust and how to draw into eternity.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

And I feel like it's not always just a trust fall. Right. You're not just falling into it, but sometimes it's just realizing you are in it.

[Joy Harjo]

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. We're all in it right now.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Ada Limone]

That there's a. There's a way in which we move through the world and someone says, how are you? And we say, fine. And that's the contract.

[Joy Harjo]

Yes.

[Ada Limone]

And then there's a way that when you are alone, whether you have a meditation practice or whether it's walking in the woods or whether it's, you know, being just in silence on the subway car or in an office where you will think, what is happening to me? And you will recognize what you are grieving and that it is there and that it is part of you and that you've been carrying it. And so it's not about necessarily turning it on and letting it go, but recognizing that it's there.

[Interviewer]

Awareness. That was wonderful.

[Joy Harjo]

That's a good way to end.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It was great to meet you both. Thank you.