National bestseller

An ALA Notable Book

Three-term poet laureate Joy Harjo offers a vivid, lyrical, and inspiring call for love and justice in this contemplation of her trailblazing life.

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as U.S. poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic, and wise follow-up to Crazy Brave, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice.

Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child, and the messengers of a changing earth -- owls heralding grief, resilient desert plants, and a smooth green snake curled up in surprise. She celebrates the influences that shaped her poetry, among them Audre Lorde, N. Scott Momaday, Walt Whitman, Muscogee stomp dance call-and-response, Navajo horse songs, rain, and sunrise. In absorbing, incantatory prose, Harjo grieves at the loss of her mother, reckons with the theft of her ancestral homeland, and sheds light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife, and community member.

Moving fluidly between prose, song, and poetry, Harjo recounts a luminous journey of becoming, a spiritual map that will help us all find home. Poet Warrior sings with the jazz, blues, tenderness, and bravery that we know as distinctly Joy Harjo.

• We started tracking this book on March 4, 2021.
• This book was $9.99 when we started tracking it.
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• The current price of this book is $9.39 last checked 22 hours ago.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $2.99.
• The lowest price to date was $2.99 last reached on September 4, 2025.
• This book has been $2.99 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $9.99 last reached on September 13, 2025.
• This book has been $9.99 6 times since we started tracking it.

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• Print Length: 222 Pages
• File Size: 128 KB