The Poetics of Carol Muske and Joy Harjo :: Biography Biographies Essays

The Poetics of Carol Muske and jubilate Harjo I began a study of autobiography and memoir writing several eld ago. Recently I discovered two poets who believe that recording nonp atomic number 18ils place in history is integral to their art. Carol Muske and Joy Harjo are renowned poets who explore the intricacies of self in regards to cultural and diachronic place. Muske specifically addresses the poetics of women poets, while Harjo addresses the poetics of minority, specifically Native American, writers. Both poets emphasize the autobiographical nature of poetry. Muske and Harjo regard the self as integral to their art. In this theatrical of self, Muske and Harjo discuss the importance of truth- obese testimony and history in their poetics. Muske says, testimony exists to demo a conception beyond the self and the drama of the self, even the world of silenceor the unanswerable (Muske 16). Muske asks, The question of self, for a woman poetis continually vexingwhat is a womans s elf? (Muske 3). Women have historically had their self created for them by the patriarchal society in which they live, which leaves contemporary women question how to define a womans self at all. veritable(a) if they, as women, can create a self, how accurate is it? Muske muses on what is a truth telling self since a womans perception of truth is colored always by what the patriarchal society is telling her is truth. Muske says in her poem A Private Matter, there are the lyric, dialogue of people you once became or not. It is in these words that a woman finds herself, a poem of all the selves in a self, but not without a cost. In Epith, Muske muses You forget yourselfwith each look pin,each chip off the old rock,each sip of the longsighted toast to your famous independence,negotiated at such costand still refusing to fit. The inclination of an orbit to bear witness seems aligned with the miss self (Muske 4). Women create the missing self by telling their stories, not the sto ries that have been told to them by a male dominated society, but those stories that define that missing self. In so doing, Muske reiterates the statement James Olney makes when he says, ... even as the autobiographer fixes limits in the past, a new experiment in living, a new experience in consciousness ... and a new projection or metaphor of a new self is under way (Olney).