Healing Earthquakes
Poems
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
An award-winning collection of poems that vividly capture the astonishing emotional range of an entire romance from beginning to end.
Jimmy Santiago Baca introduces us to a man and woman before they are acquainted and re-creates their first meeting, falling in love, their decision to make a family, the eventual realization of each other’s irreconcilable faults, the resulting conflicts, the breakup and hostility, and, finally, their transcendence of the bitterness and resentment.
Throughout the relationship we are privy to the couple’s anguish of loneliness, the heady rush of new love, the irritations and joys of raising children, the difficulties in truly knowing someone, the doldrums of breakup, and so on. It is impossible not to identify with these characters and to recognize the universal drama of human connection. As he weaves this story, Baca explores many of his traditional themes: the beauty and cruelty of the desert lands where he spent much of his life, the grace and wisdom of animals, and the quiet dignity of life on small Chicano farms. An extraordinary work that “expresses both bliss and heartache with lyric intensity” from one of America’s finest poets (Booklist).
“Baca is a force in American poetry . . . His words heal, inspire, and elicit the earthly response of love.” —Garrett Hongo
“[Baca] writes with unconcealed passion . . . what makes his writing so exciting to me is the way in which it manifests both an intense lyricism and that transformative vision which perceives the mythic and archetypal significance of life-events.” —Denise Levertov
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Building on the achievement of the epic poem Martin & Meditations on the South Valley and his memoirs Working in the Dark: Reflections of a Poet in the Barrioand the forthcoming A Place to Stand: The Making of a Poet (Forecasts, May 28), World Heavyweight Poetry Bout champ Baca's new book-length work is a sprawling journal of epic proportions. A series of small poems divided among five books, it explores the history of love in the poet's personal relationships: in (and not in) his childhood community ("as I am born again in the suffering of my people"); his mother ("I wanted to suckle them again and crawl up inside her/ again/ and always be innocent") and brother ("your dying/ made a rush of silver knives/ explode through my soul"); women taken as lovers (not fond recollections), and the first woman with whom he found love. Heavy with metaphor throughout, the "Healing" in the title no doubt resonates with the poem's epicenter: the falling in and falling out of love with his wife, a process steeped in contradictions as much as self-indulgence. The poems, correspondingly, are intensely personal, contradictory and completely forthcoming: "At the airport on the floor with my laptop writing you love poems/ you'll never have a love like mine, Lisana, ever." The book begins in the barrio, with an angry teen needing love, and ends in a garage, where the poet muses over the Chicano men who change his tires. Despite the melodrama in between, or maybe because of it, the poet seems reconciled to being himself by the book's end. It is a poem that professes and lives up to its own integrity.
Customer Reviews
Life and death. Peace and war.
Amazing struggles captured on ink and paper. Sharing his love and dedication to spreading peace. Awesome book for anyone to read. Most of all a great book for a chicano to read.