LITR 5535 American Romanticism UHCL 2006 student poetry presentation

Biographical Information Related to American Romanticism:

Joy Harjo has an M.F.A and has taught at several universities in the western part of the United States. Her family background is relevant to interpreting the romantic elements of her poem because her heritage illuminates one of the ideas in objective two: “Americans are racially divided and historically related.”

Harjo’s mother is of Cherokee, French, and Irish heritage; her father was a member of the Creek tribe; her paternal grandfather was a Baptist minister; and parental great grandfather led a Creek rebellion against the forced removal of the Creek people from Alabama to Oklahoma in 1832.

Harjo’s heritage and poetry directly relate to our current readings. Written shortly before Harjo’s great grandfather led the Creek rebellion, the author of “Memorial of the Cherokee Citizens, December 1829,” writes about “our hearts” in a similar vein that Harjo writes about “our hearts” in “Call it Fear.” Both writers are trying to reconcile what they see as inconsistencies with Christianity.

Nine years after writing “Call it Fear,” in an interview published in The Kenyon Review, Harjo stated, “It has taken me years to divest myself of Christian guilt, the Puritan cloud that provides the base for the culture of this country…or at least to recognize the twists and turns of the illogic in my own sensibility.”

Timeline from The Last of the Mohicans to “Call it Fear”

1826	The Last of the Mohicans first published	Romantic Idealism
1829	“The Cherokee Memorials” to the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States	Reality that Christianity conflicts with the Indian Removal Act
1830	Indian Removal Act	Reality
1832	Joy Harjo’s great-grandfather leads a Creek rebellion against forced removal	Reality
1983	Joy Harjo writes “Call it Fear”	“Inward journey through personal and collective memory.”

Call it Fear

There is this edge where shadows

and bones of some of us walk

backward

Talk backward. There is this edge

Call it an ocean of fear of the dark. Or

name it with other songs. Under our ribs

our hearts are bloody stars. Shine on

shine on, and horses in their galloping flight

strike the curve of ribs.

Heartbeat

and breathe back sharply. Breathe

backwards.

There is this edge within me

I saw it once

an August Sunday morning when the heat hadn’t

left the earth. And Goodluck

sat sleeping next to me in the truck.

We had never broken through the edge of the

singing at four a.m.

We had only wanted to talk, to hear

Any other voice to stay alive with.

And there was this edge—

not the drop of sandy rock cliff

bones of volcanic earth into

Albuquerque

Not that,

But a string of shadow horses kicking

and pulling me out of my belly,

not into the Rio Grande but into the music

barely coming through

Sunday church singing

from the radio. Battery worn-down but the voices

Talking backward.

“Call it Fear” is a modern lyric: a short song-like poem that emphasizes personal feelings. The majority of Harjo’s poem embodies ideas of Romanticism, such as desire and rebellion, and incorporates romantic motifs, such as the gothic style. Fear is an edge that her spirit, symbolized by the horses, has a desire to break through. The horses are both “in their galloping flight,” thus attempting to run free and a “shadow of horses kicking / and pulling” her out of “her belly,” thus a gothic-type ghost, ripping out her guts. Her spirit is identifiably American because it represents the conflicts associated with a desire for freedom. Harjo, specifically, expresses a desire to be free from the fear of oppressive ideas that are represented by the “Sunday church singing.” At the end of the poem, she magnifies Romanticism by using contrast. She inserts the mundane, realistic image of a radio with a worn down battery, then she ends on the haunting, romantic note of the voices “talking backward.”

Objective 1a. Romantic Spirit or Ideology: To describe, identify, and criticize attitudes associated with Romanticism, such as rebellion.

In Native American culture there is a sacred spirit that does things backwards, which forces people to examine their doubts, fears, etc. What do you think the spirit’s purpose is in showing the romantic idea of rebellion?

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Objective 1c: Romantic Genres: To describe and evaluate leading literary genres of Romanticism, such as the romance narrative (a journey from repression to transcendence).

“Call it Fear” is part of a collection of poems entitled She had Some Horses.

The collection is a journey from repression to transcendence, where do you think this poem fits in that romantic journey? Do you see the beginnings of transcendence as it relates to Romanticism in “Call it Fear?”

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Objective 1c: Romantic Genres: To describe and evaluate leading literary genres of Romanticism, such as the Gothic style (haunted physical and mental spaces, the shadows dark and light).

Objective 2: Cultural Issues: To identify Americans as racially divided, but historically related people who develop “Old and New Canons” of romantic literature.

Do you think Joy Harjo’s work is part of a “New Canon” of romantic literature?

Harjo is an accomplished jazz musician, are there any places in the poem where romantic qualities are evident in the rhythm of her words, such as her use of onomatopoeia.