{"id":1514,"date":"2015-09-23T00:00:39","date_gmt":"2015-09-23T04:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=1514"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:49:17","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:49:17","slug":"sept-23-the-poet-and-the-pope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2015\/09\/23\/sept-23-the-poet-and-the-pope\/","title":{"rendered":"Sept 23 – The Poet and the Pope"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, September 23 – \u00a0“I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have not met most of the poets who find their way to this “Work Day in a Hard Time” poetry list; some lived centuries ago, \u00a0with others, our paths just haven\u2019t intersected. \u00a0 The mission of the Work Day list is to introduce poets who write flint-hard language that takes the reader into the heart of the human condition, \u00a0language that does not flinch from violence, does not evade tenderness. \u00a0Joy Harjo is a soul friend I have known since 1968. \u00a0When I heard last week that Joy had received the 2015\u00a0Wallace Stevens Award<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0I was thrilled: {“The Wallace Stevens Award is given annually to recognize outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry. Established in 1994, the award carries a $100,000 stipend. Recipients are chosen by the Academy of American Poets Board of Chancellors.\u00a0No applications are accepted.\u201d}.<\/p>\n

This week Pope Francis is on my mind too. \u00a0 I looked for one of Joy’s poems that Pope Francis would \u00a0understand deep in his soul; and found an early poem,\u00a0\u201cGrace\u201d \u00a0{In Mad Love and War,<\/u>\u00a01990}. \u00a0 \u00a0Francis does not work fluently in English, but his constant attention to people who are cut off from the world\u2019s well-tended places, makes it easy to imagine that he would read\u00a0\u201cGrace\u201d and feel at home here: \u00a0\u201cI think of the Church is a field hospital on the world\u2019s battlefield. \u00a0When someone arrives, battered and in crisis, you don\u2019t test her cholesterol level. \u00a0You try to get to the heart of the violence that threatens his life.\u201d \u00a0{n.b., loose translation on a busy morning w\/o time to look it up}. \u00a0 This poet and this pope have voices that touch the world as beautiful and brave, as tragic and comic and sacred.<\/p>\n

Congratulations on the Wallace Stevens Prize, Joy. \u00a0Welcome to the US, Francis.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Best to read the poem aloud, \u00a0with pauses, several times.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Post:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cGrace\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think of Wind and her wild ways the year we had nothing to lose and lost it anyway\u00a0in the cursed country of the fox.\u00a0 We still talk about that winter, how the cold froze imaginary buffalo on the stuffed horizon of snowbanks.\u00a0\u00a0 The haunting voices of the starved and mutilated broke fences, crashed our thermostat dreams, and we couldn’t stand it one more time. So once again we lost a winter in stubborn memory, walked through cheap apartment walls, skated through fields of ghosts into a town that never wanted us, in the epic search for grace.<\/p>\n

Like Coyote, like Rabbit, we could not contain our terror and clowned our way through a season of false midnights.<\/p>\n

We had to swallow that town with laughter, so it would go down easy as honey.<\/p>\n

And one morning as the sun struggled to break ice, and our dreams had found us with coffee and pancakes in a truck stop along Highway 80, we found grace.<\/p>\n

I could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white buffalo escaped from memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise of balance. We once again understood the talk of animals, and spring was lean and hungry with the hope of children and corn.<\/p>\n

I would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked into the spring thaw. We didn’t; the next season was worse. You went home to Leech Lake to work with the tribe and I went south. And, Wind, I am still crazy. I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Joy-Harjo\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"PopeFrancisHolyThurs\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u00a0Joy Harjo<\/td>\n\u00a0Francis washing prisoners\u2019 feet<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, September 23 – \u00a0“I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it.” I have not met most of the poets who find their way to this “Work Day in a Hard … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1514"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1532,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514\/revisions\/1532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}