Reesom Haile also writes in a spirit that is inseparable from Eritrea's century-long struggle for independence. In his own words,

The Eritrean struggle for independence is the primary motive force for my art…. We Eritreans have taken on all comers for our right to self-determination, and my art is but a continuation and an expansion of that struggle aimed at self-definition.

Eritrea's war for independence was simultaneously a war for its culture: its ancient traditions as well as its modern manifestations and transformations. Again in Reesom Haile's words,

Successive enemies of Eritrean independence over the years have tried defining Eritrea in ways that would justify the outrageous measures they would take to deny Eritrea its place in the sun. They have tried to diminish Eritrea politically, economically, militarily, and culturally into non-existence except as an appendage of the builders of colonial and neo-colonial empires. But Eritrea has proved a survivor….

War as a cultural education towards making peace requires not only the barrel of a gun but also the barrel of a pen, as Ngugi wa Thiong'o observes. The cultural bomb can be as deadly as bombs falling from the sky. What is in the mind of the person holding the gun and pulling the trigger? The fighter and the writer not only need each other. In Eritrea, they often have been the same person - yet always the same person in spirit. As Reesom Haile recalls:

I returned to Eritrea in 1994 after twenty years of life in exile. I came back to find our languages and our poetry a bit battered, but well, considering they too had been targeted for extinction…. But we carried our languages and our art in our memories and our voices, and we used them as effectively as we used our weapons to defend ourselves throughout the struggle.

Vitally linked, Reesom Haile's language of self-determination and political self-determination produce a supreme poetry of resistance with the confidence to ask,

A local language and its poetry become the means of survival:

Poetry of resistance is inseparable from the life of the poet and his country:

While focusing on and from Eritrean culture, Reesom Haile's poetry of resistance also has a global dimension as a part of, again in his words, "the indomitable struggle of humanity." He has a self-stated "mission…to create links between my country and the world." Celebrating a "genuine," "Eritrean culture" that expresses "the essence of human struggle," as he sees it, his poetry can simultaneously partake of a literary impulse that is universal, making a literary truism breathe new life. His "imagination" with his "poet's pen," in Shakespeare's words, "bodies forth / The forms of things unknown." He "[t]urns them to shapes, and gives to aery nothing / A local habitation and a name." But if the habitation is African, let the name be African. Let the word itself and the word "language" in African languages ring out all over Africa: Mutauro, Ulwimi, Edi, Okasa, Asusu, Lolemu, Ulimi, Lakk, Ruthiomi, Lugha, Harsha, Luqha, Qwanqwa. They are the medium and they are the message, adding up to Africa's greatest expression of freedom: Amandla! The resounding African word is universally understood - as if the story of Babel and the confusion of tongues were not true - by people of all walks of life, all ages and in many languages, local and international, from under the giant Sycamore trees of arid Eritrea to the elegant arts venues of downtown New York City; from the poor, local communities of Johannesburg, South Africa, or Newark, New Jersey to the halls of the world's most distinguished universities.

No one cultivates freedom in Tigrinya and the "local habitation" in Eritrea better than Reesom Haile does. Contained within his two bilingual - Tigrinya / English - collections of poems are myriad of subjects, including: gender equality, colonialism, foreign aid, the use of knowledge, bureaucracy, history, crime, priests, travel, daughters and sons, sisters and brothers, camels, books, education, homecomings, exile, money, computers, braggarts, religion, political leadership, hopes, delusions, bravery, civic responsibility, stars, God, illiteracy, ambition, divisiveness, survival, Satan, democracy, old friends, mothers and fathers, cities, small towns, cruelty, soccer, intolerance, impulsiveness, love, language, nightlife, freedom, writing, indecision, non-governmental agencies, learning, sex, super powers, bread, marital responsibility, competition, snails, American foreign policy, democracy, women's rights, global politics, casualties of war, love, the young, elders, the nature of advice, spousal abuse, cooking, cannibalism, coffee, self-image, sleeping together, proverbs, ethnic conflict, carousing, biblical stories, tourism, national identity, aging, values, the future, the pen, words, exile, shoes, masculinity, teaching babies to walk, videos of weddings, religious hypocrisy, history, body parts, suicide, funerals, taboos, freedom, independence, infidelity, flywhisks, community, temptation, unspeakable evil, spirits, old and new housing, frankness, circles, labor, ancestors, mothers, prayers, parenting, toys, food, starvation, war, donkeys, the millennium, Jews, Muslims, Christians, punctuation, political evil, weather, onomatopoeia, loss, wisdom, literature, peace, jokes, teachers, culture, hierarchy, individualism, letters, pastry, paper, poverty, hope, surnames, God, George Bush II, sacrifice, survival, African leaders, dictators, devils, language, relationships, regrets, dependable people, dissent, angels, and home - and often humorously. If there has ever been a poetry with something for everyone, this is it: which also accounts for the great popularity of Reesom Haile's poetry in Eritrea, yet which is now a major factor in his increasing, international acclaim.

His strong and prevailing sense of political struggle and ideals might be considered romantic if they were not so realistic and rooted in the unassailable Eritrean political experience of standing alone and winning a 30-year war for independence. Thus, joining ancient symbol and the modern Eritrean war for independence, he can directly and easily address his country's leader and, by extension, any national leader who needs to know the ultimate source of his or her power:

As if breathing the poetic air of Rome when it was a republic, Reesom Haile sweeps even further back in time to Rome's Rome, evoking a Greco-African model.

The scholars may debate her origins, but Black Athena is alive and well in Eritrea.

When the leader of any African political revolution morphs all too predictably into the all too familiar "African Big Man" violently and pathologically devoted only to his own, Hobbesian survival as the Leviathan, Reesom Haile approaches him unflinchingly, even savagely, much as Samuel did the sinner, Saul:

Moreover, Reesom Haile can also espouse the most practical kind of materialism - the politics of hunger - applying the ancient form of the Tigrinya dirge to a modern, African despot and sing: