Poet Joy Harjo reads at Arts Cafe Mystic

There are plenty of ways to break the human heart. Frankly, it's not something folks often volunteer to do.

But there's something oddly redeeming and even nurturing about the process if it's nuanced by a work or works of art.

In that spirit: please see the poet Joy Harjo when she reads Friday at the Arts Café Mystic - and you can reassemble the shards of your heart later. Over the course of such collections as "In Mad Love and War," "The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, "How We Became Human" and, perhaps most famously, "She Had Some Horses," Harjo's depiction of the sufferings, triumphs and collective experience of Native Americans are at once jagged, tender, evocative and profound. And, yes, they'll break your heart.

Guitarist/vocalist Lara Herscovitch will provide the evening's musical component. A veteran of NPR's "Prairie Home Companion," Herscovitch's latest CD is called "Four Wise Monkeys."

- RICK KOSTER

Joy Harjo

and Lara Herscovitch, Arts Cafe Mystic, 7:30 p.m. Friday, 9 Water St., Mystic; $8 donation, $6 seniors and $4 students; (860) 912-2444.