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When I can no longer see
the elders by firelight in the villages
still wrapped in a song blanket,
when son, daughter, mother and father
stop talking with the red cedar,
when the last woman quits beating
her guardian hummingbird to earth,
when a fisherman eats his greed
until his bones shatter before the eyes
of the disappearing sockeye salmon,
when the tribes stop believing
their destroyers,
when the seal that gave my youth
a shield of dream circles tells
me no more stories of the sea,
and blue jay warns not even the ants
of the next storm, only then will
Crow end his fear of growing white.
—from “Crow’s Fear of Growing White”
This sixth volume of Niatum’s poetry expresses thirty years of endeavor. He extends his range in this volume, especially in the section “Love Changes the Spirit and the Dance,” to offer testimony to the risks of the heart as well as the mind and body. Cover art by Alfredo Arreguin
“Duane Niatum has long been viewed as an important poetic voice, not only in the growing body of estimable work by American Indian writers, but in American poetry as a whole. The Crooked Beak of Love, which blends masterful revisions of earlier writings with new lyrics of love, loss, and experience, is his finest and most mature work thus far.”—Joseph Bruchac
“Duane Niatum has surely attained an elder’s status in the patient mastery of his art—but the imagination that animates The Crooked Beak of Love is evergreen. There is no one like him writing poetry in America today”
— Jarold Ramsey
Born in Seattle, influenced by the stories of his Klallam grandfather, Duane Niatum has taught at eight American colleges and universities, won numerous books awards, and read from his works at the International Poetry Festival and the Library of Congress. He edited the Harpers Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry in 1988.
Of his mixed-blood ancestry, Niatum says: “My aesthetic position has always been to learn and grow from whatever sources of knowledge are available. I have, without exception, believed it extremely important to maintain a balance and give my reader the wholeness of my experience through living in both worlds. Fortunately, time has shown me how to live within this paradox. Art continues to offer the opportunity of surviving in both worlds no matter how challenging that may become at times.”