Joy Harjo is a Native American poet and musician and we can find plenty of mythical elements, symbols and values of her culture in the poem "She Had Some Horses". The repetition gives a ritualistic musicality to the poem almost becoming an incantation. The speaker emphasizes the power of ritual. I wonder if it can represent a healing emotional process? The poem explores the woman's emotional life from despair to awakening and power. The speaker is trying to find herself as a woman and appease her inner contradictions searching for oneness.
As a Native American symbol the horse is considered wild and an emblem of freedom combining the grounded power of the earth with the whispers of wisdom found in the spirit winds. I think the horses represent the fragments of spiritual condition of a woman. There are different horses and "she had some horses she liked" and "she had some horses she hated" but ultimately "these were the same horses" so as fractured as her inner being is she will achieve wholeness.
Also the poem reflets Harjo's struggle as a woman and a Native American in hostile society. Same elements we previously encountered in the poetry of Langston Hughes and Jayne Cortez.
Yes--good connection to Hughes; see also my comments on Adam's blog (current class) and Diana A's (previous class)
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