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The Human Experience In Joy Harjo's 'Perhaps The World Was Perfect'?

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Joy Harjo, a well-known Native American poet and musician, explores a range of profound philosophical topics in her works, including the concept of impermanence. This paper focuses on two of her poems, "Perhaps the World Ends Here" and "Once the World Was Perfect," and examines how Harjo uses literary devices to convey her ideas about the fleeting nature of human existence, the vulnerability of the natural world, and the impermanence of memory. Through a detailed analysis of these two poems, this paper will demonstrate the ways in which Harjo contemplates the transience of human experience and the fragility of memories and experiences in "Perhaps the World Ends Here." Poet Joy Harjo's work frequently references her native ancestry as well …show more content…

She continues, each day we venture into the world, full of joy and happiness, embracing our children, trying to keep them safe and educate them to be fair, to be compassionate. Harjo then turns her attention to the transient nature of these …show more content…

Yet as the poem goes on, Harjo exposes that this idealized world has vanished and that we are currently experiencing environmental deterioration and catastrophe.This idealized world is juxtaposed with the current state of the world, where humans have caused damage to the environment and ecosystems are threatened. The interconnectivity of all things is one of the poem's topics discussed. According to Harjo, when the natural world is lost, humans and our relationship to the globe are also lost. Our actions have a significant impact on the natural world. The land is us. It's our skeleton. We are the sacred earth that has become polluted. My grandmother is crying, and my grandfather is coughing. We are the sky, the trees, the stars, the ocean, and the oil that has leaked into it. We are the river's dying fish. The idea that all living things are interconnected and that we should care for the earth as we do ourselves is emphasized in this chapter. The poem's linguistic use by Harjo is intriguing. She uses words and phrases like "the shining light from kindness" and "the greed of people put out the light," which are both lovely and melancholy. The difference between a world that is in tune with nature and one that is destructive is shown by

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