Singing at the Gates: Selected Poems - Softcover

Baca, Jimmy Santiago

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802122930 ISBN 13: 9780802122933

Publisher: Grove Press, 2015

Synopsis

Award-winning writer Jimmy Santiago Baca is acclaimed for his talent in weaving personal and political threads to create pertinent and poignant narratives. He addresses universal issues with vigor and passion as well as emotional grace and vivid sensory detail, establishing him as a vital voice in American poetry.

Singing at the Gates is a collection of Baca’s work that stretches back over four decades. These poems revitalize the national dialogue: raging against war and imprisonment, fighting for prison reform, 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 during his years in the penitentiary, where he taught himself to read and write in addition to poems from his first chapbook and recent pieces meditating on the significance of breaking through adversity and oppression. From outraged to serene, playful to meditative, Baca’s voice is robust, searing, sensuous, and tender.

This arresting collection displays the breadth and depth of Baca’s poetic power with 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 this title

About the Author:

Jimmy Santiago Baca was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is the author of several collections of poetry, a novel, a story collection, and the acclaimed memoir A Place to Stand, which has been made into a feature documentary. His awards and honors include the National Endowment of Poetry Award, Pushcart Prize, Southwest Book Award, American Book Award, and the International Hispanic Heritage Award.

Review:

"[A] fiery retrospective collection. . . . Baca’s 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 Mexico’s treasures . . . For anyone who’s 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 you’re 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

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0802122930
• ISBN 13: 9780802122933
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288