Review: “Everybody Has a Heartbreak: A Blues” by Joy Harjo

Reviewed on 4/2/2025

★★★★☆

In “Everybody Has a Heartbreak,” Joy Harjo moves between poignant snapshots of passengers in Chicago. Entering the poem, Harjo isolates the airport from the outside world (“never get to where we are going,” “no way back”) and situates every observation in communal dissatisfaction and sorrow. She connects them with sympathetic eyes — the gatekeeper in his “minimum wage shoes,” a man dreaming of his mama’s cooking, the woman “the color of broth.” At this international intersection, where everyone is in between home and foreign lands, “heartbreaks” transcend cultural backgrounds; they are united by grief.

These melancholy images remind the speaker of “a mountain of bison skulls.” Harjo turns to herself to narrate the sufferings of Native Americans. Like all others, she is also governed by a wistful sense of longing and home — “I don’t know exactly where I’m going; I only know where I’ve been.” Past experiences and future uncertainties weigh on her shoulders. Harjo refuses to leave history, alerting “the brutality of forgetfulness.” Her heritage becomes a responsibility to remember all the pain. She offers no resolution; our losses are exactly what motivate us to find justice and healing — Indeed, “we [all] have a heartache.”

Full Poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56836/everybody-has-a-heartache-a-blues