I Give You Back by Joy Harjo - Poem for the Ninteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A
The Englewood Review of Books curates a weekly series of classic and contemporary poems that resonate with the themes of the lectionary readings. Here is one of the poems for this coming Sunday (More poems for Ninteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A can be found here)
This poem was selected to accompany one of the
lectionary readings for the coming week, Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
I Give You Back
Joy Harjo
SNIPPET:
I release you, my beautiful and terrible fear.
I release you.
You were my beloved and hated twin, but now, I don’t know you as myself.
I release you with all the pain I would know at the death of my daughters.
…
Joy Harjois an American poet, musician, playwright, author, and professor. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms (after Robert Pinsky). Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation (Este Mvskokvlke) and belongs to Oce Vpofv (Hickory Ground). She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.(via Wikipedia)