Synopses & Reviews
Award-winning writer Jimmy Santiago Baca, a vital voice in American poetry, weaves personal and political threads to create a pertinent and poignant narrative infused with vigor and passion, emotional grace and vivid sensory detail.
Singing At The Gates is a collection of new and previously published poems that reflect back over four decades of Bacas life. These are poems that revitalize the national dialogue: raging against war and imprisonment, celebrating family and the bonds of friendship, heightening appreciation for and consciousness of the environment. A career-spanning selection, it includes his early work as a budding poet, written while serving a five-year prison sentence; poems drawn from Bacas first chapbook; and recent pieces meditating on the significance of breaking through oppression.
Singing at the Gates displays the breadth and depth of Baca's poetic powerwith irreverent charm and disarming freedom of mind and soul. The vital pulse of love abiding in these poems will affirm and reaffirm, for both longtime and newfound readers, his devotion to truth and beauty.
Review
Praise for A Glass of Water:"Jimmy Santiago Bacas poems read like novels, and his novels read like poems. . . . [He] fills his prose with evocative, naturalistic details, [and] his poetrys beating heart . . . weaves stories of Chicano loss and redemption, often through a reconnection to Earths natural elements." Austin Chronicle
"The sheer passion that drives Bacas [work] is undeniable." Publishers Weekly
"Baca manages to put a face on desperation . . . also passion, joy, love of family, adventure, love, longing, and accomplishment. The imagery is striking, the prose lyrical." Albuquerque Journal
Praise for The Importance of a Piece of Paper:
"Raw and ambitious, notable for addressing important issues . . . and depicting marginalized communities and individuals who struggle to retain meaning and purpose in a harsh, unjust world." San Francisco Chronicle
"Bacas prose remains as light-saturated and unsentimental as the rugged terrainboth geographical and humanthat The Importance of a Piece of Paper charts with cartographical precision." Los Angeles Times
"[Baca] continues to mine his experience, exploring conflicts between the rich traditions of Chicano culture and a modern world impatient with them. . . . Striking." Entertainment Weekly
"Paints a picture of Chicano life that is at once cruel and sweetly redemptive. . . . Baca has the ability to convey much in few words, and his precise use of detail delivers small, startling truths." Publishers Weekly
Praise for A Place to Stand:
"Elegant and gripping . . . The velocity of [Bacas] transformation through literature is breathtaking." Los Angeles Times
"A wild ride through poverty and alcoholism, abandonment, and orphanage scenes from Dickens . . . A Place to Stand is a hell of a book, quite literally. You wont soon forget it." The San Diego Union-Tribune
"An astonishing narrative that affirms the triumph of the human spirit . . . a benchmark of Southwestern prose." Arizona Daily Star
"A brutally unflinching look back at a dead-end youth that became a crucible for vivid and vital art." Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Praise for Healing Earthquakes: A Love Story in Poems:
"A sprawling journal of epic proportions . . . intensely personal, contradictory and completely forthcoming . . . a breakthrough book for Baca." Publishers Weekly
"A veritable torrent of confessions and prayers, autobiography and reflection. Baca contemplates all the violence and injustice he has endured, rendering the personal mythological and conflating the gritty with the transcendent. Candid and earthy . . . Baca expresses both bliss and heartache with lyric intensity as he sets his struggle not merely to survive but also to become compassionate and giving within the greater context of Indio-Chicano culture, American history, and the tragedies of poverty and racism." Booklist
Praise for C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans:
"[Jimmy Santiago Baca] travels outward and inward as a Chicano in America, with all the complications that the identity entails. . . . [He is] a poet in control of his craft . . . whose voice, brutal yet tender, is unique in America . . . one worth paying attention to." The Nation
"[Baca] writes with unconcealed passion . . . but he is far from being a naïve realist; what makes his writing so exciting to me is the way it manifests both an intense lyricism and that transformative vision which perceives the mythic and archetypal significance of life-events." Denise Levertov
Review
Praise for Jimmy Santiago Baca:"A poet in control of his craft . . . whose voice, brutal yet tender, is unique in America . . . one worth paying attention to." The Nation
"[Baca] writes with unconcealed passion . . . but he is far from being a naïve realist; what makes his writing so exciting to me is the way it manifests both an intense lyricism and that transformative vision which perceives the mythic and archetypal significance of life-events." Denise Levertov
Review
Praise for Singing at the Gates:"What an achingly beautiful collection this is. So split open, so raw, honest, vulnerable, real. Spanning Baca's life in poetry, you feel the enormity of his heart and intelligence." Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones and The True Secret of Writing
"If you're Mexican in the United States today, you are outraged by how your people are treated. If you're a poet, you use your words to denounce that outrage. And if youre Jimmy Santiago Baca, those words become raw, intimate, transcendent poems, meant not only for your people but for the nation as a whole. America, after all, is still an inclusive dream worth fighting for. Racism will eventually be brought to its feet, thanks in part to poetry." Ilan Stavans, general editor of The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature
Praise for Jimmy Santiago Baca:
"A poet in control of his craft . . . whose voice, brutal yet tender, is unique in America . . . one worth paying attention to." The Nation
"[Baca] writes with unconcealed passion . . . but he is far from being a naïve realist; what makes his writing so exciting to me is the way it manifests both an intense lyricism and that transformative vision which perceives the mythic and archetypal significance of life-events." Denise Levertov
Review
"[A] fiery retrospective collection. . . . Bacas poems are warm and furious, feathered and drumming, plowed and tattooed, righteous and prayerful. His is a clarion and necessary voice, and this standout volume belongs in every library."
Booklist"This is rust-under-your-fingernails, dust-in-your-eyes, blood-in-your-mouth poetry. This is the kind of poetry that reflects the maddening of souls and chronicles a yearning for justice." American Way
"Jimmy Santiago Baca is one of New Mexicos treasures . . . For anyone whos ever had their life changed through art or words, [he] is a poet that speaks your language." Weekly Alibi
"What an achingly beautiful collection this is. So split open, so raw, honest, vulnerable, real. Spanning Baca's life in poetry, you feel the enormity of his heart and intelligence." Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones and The True Secret of Writing
"If you're Mexican in the United States today, you are outraged by how your people are treated. If you're a poet, you use your words to denounce that outrage. And if youre Jimmy Santiago Baca, those words become raw, intimate, transcendent poems, meant not only for your people but for the nation as a whole. America, after all, is still an inclusive dream worth fighting for. Racism will eventually be brought to its feet, thanks in part to poetry." Ilan Stavans, general editor of The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature
Synopsis
Award-winning writer Jimmy Santiago Baca is lauded for his talent in weaving personal and political threads to create a pertinent and poignant narrative. He addresses universal issues with vigor and passion, paired with emotional grace and vivid sensory detail, establishing him as a vital voice in American poetry.
Singing at the Gates is a collection of Bacas work that stretches back over four decadespoems that revitalize the national dialogue: raging against war and imprisonment, celebrating family and the bonds of friendship, heightening appreciation for and consciousness of the environment. A career-spanning selection, it includes poems drawn from Bacas first chapbook and recent pieces meditating on the significance of breaking through oppression. This book displays the breadth and depth of Bacas poetic powerwith irreverent charm and disarming freedom of mind and soul. The vital pulse of love abiding in these poems will affirm and reaffirm, for both longtime and newfound readers, his devotion to truth and beauty.
About the Author
Jimmy Santiago Baca has written a novel, a short story collection, fifteen books of poetry, a book of essays, and a teacher/student book set. His memoir,
A Place To Stand, won The International Prize. He wrote the feature film
Blood In/Blood Out (Touchstone Pictures, 1993), a number of other screenplays, and he wrote/produced three documentaries. He currently lives in Northern New Mexico, on a farm with his family, and he continues to work worldwide teaching literacy.