16 pages • 32 minutes read
June JordanPoem for Haruko
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Poem for My Love” by June Jordan (2005)
In this brief love poem Jordan considers her sleeping lover as well as the night, which holds both longing and peace.
“It’s Hard to Keep a Clean Shirt Clean” by June Jordan (2005)
As in “Poem for Haruko,” this longer poem uses everyday objects and details of nature to speak about human conditions, including aspiration, regret, consequence, transformation, and endurance.
“Poem about My Rights” by June Jordan (2005)
This poem illustrates the ways in which Jordan dissolves any separation between her own experience of sex, gender, race, and relationships and her art. In this poem, the poet parses global political and social situations through her body.
“Recreation” by Audre Lord (1997)
This love poem by Audre Lord employs images of fire and flower to express and celebrate passionate intimacy.
“Thaw” by TC Tolbert (2014)
In this poem, the speaker expresses love and loss and longing through a mix of concrete objects, dialogue, wordplay, and the concept of bloom as associated with both flora and ice.
Further Literary Resources
Directed By Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (2005)
Published posthumously by Copper Canyon Press, this collection includes poems written from 1969 through 2001.
“For the Sake of People’s Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us” by June Jordan (2002)
In this essay from the collection Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays (2002) reprinted in Poetry Foundation in 2006, Jordan speaks about New World poetry, embodied in the work of Walt Whitman, as the essential poetry of non-European democracy despite its general exclusion from and malignment by 20th-century literary criticism.
“The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America: Something Like a Sonnet for Phyllis Wheatley” by June Jordan (2002)
Also reprinted in Poetry Foundation in 2006, this essay looks at the unlikely literary career of Phyllis Wheatley, a Black girl sold into slavery in 1761, who at 18 was the first Black person and the second woman in America to publish a volume of poetry.
“Among Lovers, among Friends” by Sue Russell (1995)
In this review of Haruko: Love Poems (1994), the collection in which “Poem for Haruko” first appeared, reviewer Sue Russell describes Jordan’s work as expressing “regret with the return of a clearer vision and the ability to see oneself as part of the larger world” (Russell, 152).
Listen to Poem
Listen to a recording of the poem performed during the semi-finals of Poetry Out Loud 2018 (poem begins at 7:18).
