Transmotion Vol 1, No 1 (2015)
Baca, Jimmy Santiago. Singing at the Gates: Selected Poems. New
York: Grove Press, 2014. 249 pp.
http://www.groveatlantic.com/#page=isbn9780802122100%20
Jimmy Santiago Baca's long career is well-represented
in the collection Singing at the Gates
(Grove Press 2014). From his early prison poetry to longer lyric poems to
accompany art exhibitions, the collection solidifies the major themes in Baca's
poetic oeuvre. The poems chart a move from self to other that embraces a hybrid
identity seeking to understand the ways of injustice that act on men and women
of color.
The collection opens with "Excerpts from the Mariposa
Letters" as a way of grounding Baca's poetic journey in its earliest
incarnation. The young speaker fairly jumps off the page with passion—for
love, desire, fear. The letters expose the pleasure and pain of being able to
express emotion and thought through the written word. The work is raw and makes
a nice introduction to the more familiar poems of Baca's early collections.
The individual in captivity appears to remind readers of
Baca's early start, and his continued interest in the ways that individuals
fare in prisons. Readers familiar with Baca's early work will welcome the
return of some of the vivid images pervading his poems: The young prisoners who
"gnaw their hearts off / caught in the steel jaws of prison" ("Just Before
Dawn" 20-21) take on a new resonance when one considers Baca's active
engagement with writing workshops in prisons and juvenile detention centers.
The collection offers retrospective look at the ways in which poetry can heal
wounds both self- and society-inflicted.
Chicano scholars have focused on Baca's relationship to the
land through forging a Native/Chicano identity. Poems such as "A Handful of Earth, That is All I Am" offer a poignant return to the land
politics that pervade northern New Mexico history. The lines "My blood runs
through this land, / like water thrashing out of mountain walls / bursting,
sending the eagle from its nest" (8-10) highlight mestizo claims to the land
and culture of the US Southwest. However, these themes of land, ancestors, and
home find new significance when read with newer works. Ranging from Mexico to
Kansas, "Rita Falling from the Sky," examines the life of a Chihuahuan
woman found in Kansas and locked in a mental institution. Later, a doctor
discovered that she was speaking a native language of the Rarámuri
Indians, and she was released to return to her village. The long, lyric poem
gives voice to Rita as it imagines her journey through the desert walking
north. The folk images of chile, peyote, maize, clay,
and more underscore that the land she traverses is actually Aztlan
(Baca 189). As a new poem in the collection, "Rita Falling from the Sky" makes
visible the move from self to other in Baca's quest for a universal exploration
of hybridity and identity, yet the effect is less haunting than the earlier
poems.
Newly-collected, recent poems are also noteworthy for their
desire to speak in different voices. The poetic focus on a transvestite
prostitute in "Smoking Mirrors" and a young woman in "Julia" offers a speaker
that initially seems jarringly different from the speaker in the early sections
of the collection. The poems are an attempt to negotiate a "psychic split" that
Baca felt evident in his earlier work; the leap from bicultural to transvestite
is not so far, after all, he argues (xxii). While the subject matter is worthy
and challenging, there seems to be something missing from the context of the
poems. Baca notes in the Preface that some of these new poems were written to
accompany photography exhibits about the Juarez border and Northern New Mexico.
It would be interesting to view the photos alongside the poems.
While the collection relies heavily on early work, the title
poem provides an apt theme for the assemblage's ambition. "Singing at the
Gates" reads as a welcome update to Corky Gonzales's "I am Joaquín,"
anthem of the Chicano Movement. This poem's images include women of La Raza and
myriad reimagining of ways Chicanas/os endure, from
men carrying babies, to Chicanos with backpacks, to abuelas
on Harleys. This poem is a testament to the strength of Baca's vision. In
attempting to move beyond the stereotypes of culture, class, and gender, Baca
has presented the possibility of a thought-provoking reinterpretation of his
early work.
Leigh C. Johnson, Marymount University