visual layers

 Joy Harjo's "Anchorage" poem was filled with a lot of imagery pertaining to changing landscape and the urban environment/experience. In the beginning lines of the poem, Joy contrasts the changed past landscape of Anchorage and the new urban city scape. She visually describes historical acts of nature which have shaped Anchorage's landscape, glaciers and the 1964 earthquake. "It hasn't always been this way, because glaciers ... create oceans, carve earth and shape the city here. When reading the first few stanzas I get a visual image of the different layered landscapes that have made up the city of Anchorage. Attention is drawn to the past landscape and people, the current urban city and the consideration for the future landscape to come. The original landscape she describes as "There are Chugatch Mountains to the east and whale and seal to the west." The image of this space she creates is centered around nature and the next lines describe how nature has changed the landscape. She goes on to describe a temporary urban layer that exists presently. "Once a storm of boiling earth cracked open the streets, threw open the town. It's quiet now, but underneath the concrete is the cooking earth." Here the current urban landscape is depicted as a temporary landscape that will eventually change in the future as a result of nature. In the following stanzas the author and Nora's experience inside the urban city is depicted. These two recognize the present landscape, understand the future landscape will change, and remember the past layers of the landscape. "Nora and I go walking down 4th Avenue and know it is all happening." Nora uses the imagery of a homeless woman to describe the present layer and she and Nora identify her as someone's grandmother who is an indigenous person, and should be culturally and historically  tied to the past layer and she today she lives on the same land which has changed as a result of layering landscapes. "On a park bench we see someone's Athabascan grandmother." The imagery created in the poem describes how the different layers of history and forces of nature have shaped the landscape to make it what it is today, and ultimately new layers will reshape it again. Joy and Nora in the poem recognize the past layers of culture that exist in the present landscape and she makes note to reference the future landscape to a dream, "And know that our dreams don't end here,.." all as a way to create a visual image of the layers that make up the landscape.