One of the finest poets I've ever met personally is red hawk, whose work absolutely needs to be read by any seeker of enlightenment. He's no part time poet... he's held the Alfred Hodder Fellowship in the Humanities at Princeton University, and his first book, Journey of the Medicine Man , was a finalist for the Walt Whitman award of the Academy of American Poets. His second, The Sioux Dog Dance, was the runner-up for the Paterson Poetry Prize and was nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. His work has garnered comparisons to Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare and Walt Whitman.

Elsa-Brita Titchenell, a literary critic, said of his work, "This slender book of verse contains a rare example of true poetry. Too often a string of words appears in print, poorly chosen prose cut into fragments to resemble free verse, but having none of the grace or inspiration to move the reader or to rouse a resonance in his mind. In Red Hawk's poetry there is a magic which evokes deep response and enables the reader to suffer his fellow feeling. The author has a singular skill to transform experience into words and words into experience, as well as the discipline to cease before emotion overwhelms or is exhausted."

There's a saying that great photographers take photos because what they see is too beautiful to bear. The same is true for red hawk's poetry. His work is both honest and accessible, but does not compromise one iota in capturing the beauty and pain of life. Nothing in his own life is off limits, and he writes with such brutal honesty that you are left speechless and in tears during one of his readings. I'm not kidding. When I saw him at a reading a few years ago, there were grown men weeping as he read his work.

In his newest book, Wreckage With A Beating Heart, he delights us with 300 pages of poems in four sections exploring the universal themes of love, life and death. And one poem from that book will delight the shamanic tantrists in our midst, in which he describes his vision quest at a sweat lodge that gave him the nickname red hawk – two words not capitalized, he notes.

You can’t fool the Sweat Lodge.
It reveals everything, courage and stupidity
alike. Courage comes from the Earth;
stupidity is the only thing
we can honestly claim as our own.
- from “Red Hawk Is Not An Indian Name”

He adds, "What I saw in my vision was my sign: sun dawning over mountain and two birds flying into the sun. The death of self is the birth of love. The moment that I had that vision was in the dead of winter on the Buffalo River – everywhere no humans, two red-tail hawks flying into the sun. Earth named me and showed me my direction in life at that moment in 1975. That was the moment that the bond of my mother the earth was internalized for me."

He adds, "Death is love. In order for love to flourish, I have to die to myself and live for others without regard to myself. Love is the greatest freedom; love is the greatest slavery. Unless I understand both sides, I never get the full impact of love. Love is the greatest responsibility in human life." In this way, he promises to tell the truth about himself regardless of how it makes him look. Nothing lies beyond examination. The more it hurts, the better the poem. His poetry is as raw and searing, as love itself.

Here's my favorite poem by red hawk:

Prologue: The Way of Power

I will tell you how it is with Power
The Way is hard
and easily lost.

Take me for example.
Once I had a tiny power
no greater than the breath of a bird,
the power to make words.
But it was more than I could handle.

I was sloppy with it,
spoke too much
and at the wrong times,
used the poems badly
for my own glory.

So the Power was taken away.
Even the breath of a bird
made me vain and arrogant
and I used it to make myself little.

Now I sit still on my porch
and I see how
I am a stupid man
who was made sick
by the bird's breath.

I am dying of it
because the breath got inside me
before I made myself strong
and now it is blowing me away
like a small frail bird
caught in a high wind.

What is left for me
is to die quietly
because my stupidity made a bid noise.
This is what I know
about Power.

And another that makes you remember our history:

What They Did To Sitting Bull

Lured into the fort by promise
of meat for his people, they meant to
murder him for the Ghost Dance
and because he was a power they
could not understand or tame,
sho they did.
Murder him.
They shot and shot him until
he fell in the snow like a sack
of wet corn meal and the blood
ran out of him like the cry
of a lone Crow in an empty sky.

Then they quartered the body,
hacked it into 4 pieces
with an axe,
thinking this would keep him
from coming back and put an end
to his power.
Because they had not understanding,
they could not know
it increased his power 4 times,
sent him in the 4 directions and
opened 4 doors into the the starry worlds.
You can fool a straving dog with
the promise of meat, but
a man of real power will
eat your heart and relish
every lie and frail conceit;
he will feast on your weakness
and for every one you kill,
4 will come seeking your unborn children
and they will carve them from your loins and
they will carry them away
and feed them in the empty sky
for the meat which was promised him.

There is only on thing I can add... please buy his work, all you have to do is click on the photos below...

Note: Red Hawk’s new book - prose, not poetry - is entitled Self Observation: The Awakening of Conscience. This is a contemplation in prose on the practice of self-study with poems as illustrations. “Know Thyself” is one of the most ancient teachings for awakening. Self Observation is the means. Here is what others have said about this book:

“Self-observation is a…practice that merits the focused attention it receives in this beautifully concise and readable volume. Red Hawk writes about Self-observation with the unmistakable voice of unforced authority, which is available only through long experience of deep, persistent and productive cultivation. Both experienced practitioners of Self-observation and other forms of witnessing meditation, as well as neophytes to rigorous self-exploration, will find rich food in this unique contribution…” - Robert A. Schmidt, Ph.D., Spiritual Director, Tayu Meditation Center.

“Red Hawk speaks the truth here…There is no better dissertation on the subject on the book market—follow his indications and you are bound to succeed” - E.J. Gold, author American Book of the Dead, Life In the Labyrinth and many other books.

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