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Janisse Ray
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U.S. Poet Laureate at Ocmulgee Mounds: "I have broken my addiction to war and desire."

2/20/2020

30 Comments

 
Picture


When you stand on Temple Mound at Ocmulgee Mounds in Macon, Georgia, you can look out across Walnut Creek and its floodplain. Interstate 16 runs less than a quarter-mile away, parallel to the Ocmulgee River. The creek runs beneath an interstate bridge to get to its mama, the Ocmulgee.
 
Yesterday when I was there the creek, floodplain, and river were one body of water, lapping at the interstate embankments and bridge pilings, swirling around leafless willows and river birch, flooding the park trails and also the boardwalk, with only the railing visible above water. Although the Ocmulgee is a blackwater river, the water everywhere was red as clay, hepatica-colored, saturated with the red silt from nasty construction projects upstream, the blood-sucking of a booming economy. 
 
Red earth turns its water red.
            
Yesterday all day the sky looked as if an old wool blanket had been pulled across it, and occasionally rain poured out of the blanket. You could tell by looking up that more rain was coming. On the ground, the spring ephemerals were coming out, things like henbit and the tiniest violets in the world. 
            
History will always find you, said the man who introduced the poet. He said a poet laureate embodies the soul of the nation, one moving now toward reconciliation.
            
Joy Harjo is the first Native American poet laureate of the United States. 
            
Harjo said that the Ocmulgee Mounds touch her deeply. This is her ancestral home. The Creek Nation was forced to leave when Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830. They left behind homes, cornfields, pottery, printing presses, food stores, horses, trading posts, burial grounds – so much they loved. 
            
Harjo was 23 the first time she came to Macon. When she returns to visit, she is a ghost -- for the people who stayed behind, the people forced at gunpoint to leave were essentially killed. 
            
She sang a song. Ah-le-na-le-no.
            
She was wearing a red, v-necked sweater with black pants and tan boots. Her black hair was thick. Circular earrings tangled in her long hair.
            
She read from An American Sunrise. She said that our spirits always ask us questions. Hers asked, "What did you learn here?" and that's how this book got started. She read "My Man's Feet" and "Redbird": I think of all poems as love poems, she said. Then she played her flute and sang a poem.
            
We were in the visitor's center, probably 250 people, about half of us in chairs, the rest standing. The room was rounded to look like a kiva. The earth, she's a circle, Harjo said. I was wedged behind a massive display, a thigh-high cabinet with a map of the territory printed on it, perching on a narrow concrete window ledge. Between the slats of the blinds I looked at Earth Mound, Great Temple Mound, Lower Temple Mound (2/3s of it was destroyed with the first railroad came through), Cornfield Mound.
            
A lot of powerful, intelligent people live in Macon, and I could see many of them when I looked around. The people were so beautiful. When Harjo played her flute, one woman in a long, multicolored skirt wiped her eyes.
            
The poet Gordon Johnston was standing beside the cabinet. He teaches at Mercer. He and Matt Jennings, who introduced Harjo, wrote a book on the Ocmulgee Mounds. Before the reading Gordon and I were talking. Gordon has been canoeing all the waterways of Georgia. 
            
Gordon said something I've been thinking, that I've not heard anybody else say. He said, "This is the worst flooding I've seen since I've lived here." I agree. This is the worst flooding I've seen, I think my entire life. Only the roof of the picnic shelter is visible above water at Deen's Landing on the Altamaha. At English Eddy, where last fall somebody made a moonscape out of hundreds of acres, it's all standing water now, proving they logged a floodplain. Crossing the bridges, with so much water, is dizzying.
            
I asked Gordon if he'd paddled the Ohoopee, and he said no, so I invited him to come visit, told him I'd like to paddle with him.
            
Since we're talking about reconciliation, I could say a lot about reconciliation with the earth. But this is a blog-post, my first, and I'll just leave it with this: yesterday I heard the first Native American poet laureate of the United States, Joy Harjo, read her poetry while her dead ancestors listened and while ancient ceremonial mounds, emerald with grass, rose high above the swirling red waters of the Ocmulgee.
            
"We all make our way back home eventually," Harjo said. "May we all find a way home."
 
From “Equinox”:
Soon they will come for me and I will make my stand
before the jury of destiny. Yes, I will answer in the clatter
of the new world, I have broken my addiction to war
and desire. Yes, I will reply, I have buried the dead.

Matt Jennings introduces Harjo.
Joy Harjo's official portrait.
30 Comments
Tom Wilson
2/20/2020 08:38:52 am

Interesting that the ghosts are real and the real are ghosts. Please don't make this your last blog post.

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Gordon Johnston
2/20/2020 08:41:18 am

I hope your first blog post is not your last, Janisse. This was a pleasure to read -- true to the communal spirit of Harjo's rapport with the audience last night. It's bracing to know the river in flood registers as sublime (beautiful and terrifying) to someone else as it does to me. I look forward to the Ohoopee, but it will be a while before that big brown python of God can be paddled.

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Raven link
2/20/2020 08:45:25 am

Very nice, I always enjoy reading your work. I look forward to your blog.

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Lynn Lilly
2/20/2020 08:45:52 am

Always a joy to read your writing...so glad there will be regular opportunities to enjoy fresh new thoughts from you. You are a wonderful healing voice for our tired world.

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Peter Peteet
2/20/2020 09:05:39 am

Thanks,so glad you got there and wrote it up for us to read.

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Beth Williams
2/20/2020 09:11:20 am

Your writing is beautiful. Keep blogging.

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Mark Ray link
2/20/2020 09:13:23 am

Wow. I have stood on that mound and listened to the wind and warbles of birds. I have gotten on my knees to commune with the bird's-eye speedwell. I have stood on that boardwalk and played hide-and-seek with common yellowthroats and other feathered phantoms. Thanks for bringing back those memories and for giving those deeper thoughts.

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Hilda Downer
2/20/2020 09:22:25 am

Your blog is well crafted and soulful. I usually have to "walk off" my thoughts after a poetry reading, but you have found a more useful way in sharing your assessment. I have always felt every poem I write is a love poem so that was a nice reassurance to hear from our Poet Laureate.

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Rebekah
2/20/2020 09:23:59 am

Your writing is soothing to the senses and to the soul.

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Diana hartel
2/20/2020 09:32:14 am

Little prickling hair raise by the end of the post. Beauty joined to history and the body becomes alert, vigilant. Love Harjo, ocmulgee mounds, and you.

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Rhonda Mullen
2/20/2020 09:43:51 am

Thank you, dear Janisse, for writing this beautiful piece, which was just what I needed to read on this gray and rainy day. I look forward to your next post.

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Anita Blackwell
2/20/2020 09:57:53 am

I felt like I was there in the room. Powerful, descriptive and such messages on many levels. Love your passion for the earth and your writing. A gift to us all.

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Robert B Currey
2/20/2020 10:29:56 am

As always you continue to write and speak in a way that resonates in my heart! Thank you once again for what you do.

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Sarah Gordon
2/20/2020 10:42:21 am

I wanted to be there, and your post made me feel as though I had been. Thank you, Janisse.

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Sue
2/20/2020 11:03:34 am

thank you Janisse. I'm hoping to visit that special place next weekend...if the water don't rise.

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Marie Amerson
2/20/2020 11:15:54 am

Thank you for writing about this experience. May more people appreciate an opportunity to be among those "ancient ceremonial mounds, emerald with grass" and the "red waters of the Ocmulgee" —though perhaps not when the river is swirling so much.

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Tom Lawton
2/20/2020 01:02:16 pm

Tried to spot the mounds as I passed on I-16 last week, wondering who is caring for them. Now I see.

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Jill Neimark
2/20/2020 01:16:59 pm

Beautiful blog post. I wanted to go and this blog is the next best thing to being there.

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Lou Kregel link
2/20/2020 02:31:27 pm

Thank you for speaking what I feel in my heart. I’m so sick of this culture of war that has gripped our psyches

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Rob McDonald link
2/20/2020 02:52:22 pm

I would like to see this place someday, if we all last long enough. Beautiful, Janisse.

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Jeff link
2/20/2020 04:02:13 pm

Welcome to the blog world! I have read Harjo’s poetry. I’d heard she was going to be in Macon, but wasn’t able to get there to hear her. Thanks for your post.

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Andy Hall
2/21/2020 02:00:26 pm

Causes reflection on the fact that my people (yours too?) pushed Joy Harjo's people out of their ancestral home not all that long ago.

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Karen Luke Jackson link
2/21/2020 07:11:37 pm

So grateful for these reflections and to know that you will be blogging. I look forward to reading more.

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Debra Sullivan
2/22/2020 01:28:21 am

Powerful energies envelop me when I visit the Mounds. I am so sorry I missed our Poet, but very glad you were able to capture the moment, the energies, and the place with your words. Thanks, Janisse.

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Nancy Bermel
2/22/2020 11:38:09 am

I hope you keep doing this! I really enjoyed this post!

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Jim kitchens
2/22/2020 05:58:57 pm

All I know is the ceramics people loved the clay from that area.

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Jan Rogers
2/23/2020 07:56:12 am

Thanks for the post,Janisse. See you Sunday.

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Honor link
2/24/2020 05:02:33 am

Thank you, Janisse. I look forward to reading your blog going forward. We need your words.

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Harriet
2/24/2020 05:24:56 am

Thank you for blogging. And thank you for writing to share Joy Harjo's words. Very moving.

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Susan Alice Cohen
2/24/2020 06:52:52 am

Thank you, this essay was equally beautiful and heart breaking as it asks us to simultaneously keep the past, present and future in our vision.

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    Janisse Ray is a writer whose subject is often nature.  

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