From Publishers Weekly
In his fifth book of poems, Quintana (The History of Home), two-time winner of the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award, explores the shape of emotional and spiritual exile, as well as the need to return, literally and figuratively, to a place once called home. Filled with regional images and speech patterns from Chicano New Mexico, where he was born and raised, these are narrative, character-centered poems about specific tias and primos and the stories associated with each. An old miner who accurately warned of a pending cave-in explains his prescience: ``Mira, any time you see the ratones/ down there suddenly scampering up/ you'd better tambien.'' Quintana also strikes slightly dissonant comic notes, as in ``La Opera,'' in which a son interprets a mother's question to be about Puccini when in fact she's talking about a well-known talk-show host. The voice of these poems is both a product of its roots and a reaction against it. This paradox transforms the mundane events of homecoming into a serious grappling with a universal phenomenon.
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