Presenter: Ashlyn Smith
Authors: Ashlyn Smith Mckenna
Faculty Advisor: Theda Wrede
Institution: Dixie State University
Joy Harjo’s poetry collection She Had Some Horses is ridden with “horse-ghosts” of the past that metaphorically infiltrate her poems and are represented by trauma and its effects. These ghostsare the working force behind preserving Harjo’s Native American cultural roots—personally and collectively. As her collection of poetry portrays recurring themes of fear, survival, conquest, racism, and connections to the earth, all these themes are intertwined by Harjo’s written “horse-ghosts" of the past. The fearful expressions of surrealistic imagery mixed with images of reality serve as the evidence whereon these ghosts thrive and embody trauma, fear, and empowerment. Many of Harjo’s poems have the haunting residue of ghosts lingering in the stories and memories passed down from generation to generation, rooting the Native American culture deeper and deeper with origins found images of the earth’s gifts—one of them, of course, being horses. Reflective of the varying ghosts, each poem represents a ghost in its own right connecting and reverberating this central notion that the individual and the Native American culture cannot exist without its living ghosts of the past. Thus, all the “horse-ghosts” of the past—their embodiments, their representations, their existence—are vital to the preservation of the Native American culture and to the individual.