EvErybody has a heartache —
This silence in the noise of the terminal is a
mountain of bison skulls.
Nobody knows, nobody sees —
Unless the indigenous are dancing powwow all
decked out in flash and beauty
We just don’t exist. We’ve been dispersed to an
outlaw cowboy tale.
What were they thinking with all those guns and those handcuffs
In a size for babies?
They just don’t choose to remember.
We’re here.
In the terminal of stopped time I went unsteady to the beat,
Driven by a hungry spirit who is drunk with
words and songs.
What can I do?
I have to take care of it.
The famished spirit eats fire, poetry, and rain; it only wants love.
I argue:
You want love?
Do you even know what it looks like, smells like?
But you cannot argue with hungry spirits.
– Excerpt from “Everybody Has a Heartache: A Blues,” Joy Harjo, Poetry, March 2014
There is a long hallway; Its walls are stacked with the whispering of old books, the floors haunted with the quietness of footsteps long passed. Outside the small, slanted windows the sky begins to set, casting an orange hue across the lingering dust. The librarian of Brown University’s John Hay Library turns the overhead lights on, signaling an unnamed student to begin their prowl. The student is looking for nothing, and everything. Their fingers roam the bindings with the languidness of a wave rising to meet the shore; excitement builds steadily, crashing as the chosen book is taken from the shelf, and then returned back to its towered sea. The student finally settles on one like a gull squatting on a rock amongst a tumultuous paper ocean; still, enraptured by its contents, they have landed on a book of poetry by Joy Harjo.
The John Hay Library is Brown University’s special place for collections of rare books, archives, and manuscripts. Heather Cole, with the impressively long title, Special Collections Instruction and Curator for Literary and Popular Culture Collection, has been at the library for seven years; this summer she has helped acquire a collection of contemporary works from the Indigenous poet Joy Harjo, the first Native American poet laureate from 2019 to 2022.
Cole urges people to come explore the John Hay Library. She mentions, “It is a common misconception that we are this imposing marble building atop a hill and that no one is allowed in. We are open to the public, the whole point of us being here isn’t for preserving and locking these pieces away – we request things so that the public can see them.” Cole continues, “Our tagline is ‘you belong here.’ It’s great to see people who are interested in a book they read when they were younger, or a book they really loved, and be able to come and see the manuscript.”
Harjo’s poems are rooted in the spiritual and physical world, they are haunting; they tell the delicate story between the past and the present in fragments that represent dreams – like her one short poem, “Invisible Fish.” “Invisible fish swim this ghost ocean now described by waves of sand, by/ water-worn rock. Soon the fish will learn to walk. Then humans will come/ ashore and paint dreams on the dying stone. Then later, much later, the/ ocean floor will be punctuated by Chevy trucks, carrying the dreamers’/ descendants, who are going to the shore.”
Cole is honored to have Harjo choose the library as a place for her archives. She says, “We’re always looking for gaps, called ‘archival silences,’ the people and groups who aren’t represented in the archive because of histories of oppression and white supremacy at institutions, such as our own Brown University. A collection like Harjo’s is a magnet collection that will hopefully help us grow our collection of Native poets.”
There is a growing concern that taking/owning some of the content is unjust to Indigenous law or religion. Cole is cognizant that “We have to be aware of what is appropriate to have. We need to make it clear that it is a partnership, that we are not taking advantage of anyone.” She elaborates that there is a level of intimacy in releasing manuscripts to the public, and that some of the items are also spiritually important and should be private.
Cole got the opportunity to go meet Harjo and help her box up her archive. She recounts Harjo as “a lovely person to spend time with. I went to her studio in Tulsa to help her pack up her collection. I remember it was 107 degrees outside and she was floating around the studio, picking up pieces of photographs and writings and telling me the story behind them. This was incredible, because usually people just put the collection in a box and send it along.” Harjo’s willingness to intimately work with Cole could be because of her ageless connection with and mentorship by poet and Literary Arts and English professor Michael Harper.
By reading these works by Harjo, we are looking through her eyes; this is a place we peer from so we can better understand ourselves, and the world we have created. Cole believes it is important to consult literature and poetry as a bridge between past and present, “Our world writers and artists are viewing historical events through a particular lens that can help us reflect on our place in time; those times we are living in power and privilege, and how to reconcile with that.”
Or, in the last stanza or Harjo’s poem “Everybody Has a Heartache: A Blues.”
We will all find our way, no matter fire leaping
through holes in jump time,
No matter earthquake, or the breaking of love
spilling over the dreck of
matter
In the ether, stacking one burden
Against the other —
We have a heartache. •
The Harjo papers are not yet available for research. They are currently being processed, but will hopefully be available within the next year.
Photos from Heather Cole.
