Healing Earthquakes: Poems (Paperback)

by Jimmy Santiago Baca (Author) "With this letter I received from a young Chicano doing time in New Boston, Texas, I'm reminded of the beauty of bars and how my..." (more)
Key Phrases: prairie dove, First Mother, Rio Grande, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From 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 Barrio and 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. (July 10) Forecast: Baca's engag? (and ex-con) reputation, the scope and ambition of this volume and the attention a 12-city author tour will generate for it (and for A Place to Stand, also from Grove) should make this book appealing to less-regular readers of poetry a possible breakout, and certainly a breakthrough book for Baca.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In his memoir, A Place to Stand (see p.1969), Baca describes how he kept journals while in prison, recording the wild flux of emotions his memories and experiences aroused. This penchant for page-therapy, for writing in order to understand life, is the force behind Baca's newest book of poetry, 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, he writes of his struggle to reconcile lust-induced fantasies of females with real-life women, and, in a sequence of gorgeous love poems reminiscent of the Song of Songs, charts the rise and fall of a passionate, ultimately archetypal relationship. 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. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; 1 edition (July 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802138144
• ISBN-13: 978-0802138149
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #230,605 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetry with Heart, October 17, 2001

By	Jaime A. Gracia (Santa Clarita CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Jimmy Santiago Baca's `Healing Earthquakes' stands apart from much of the poetry published today. If you are looking for well-ordered lines with an academic feel, this is not it. Baca's free form is reminiscent of Whitman or Neruda, but he goes beyond Whitman, beyond Neruda. Baca exposes and rips apart the very heart and soul of his protagonist, allows him to suffer unbearably, and then reveals him as a fuller, more complex, yet still flawed human being. Imagery and metaphor are used liberally. No subject is taboo. Baca explores race, language, social issues, sex, philosophy, work, hate, pain, and love, not from a theoretical standpoint, but from someone who has been there. Every line has the ring of truth because Baca is writing about what he knows. While the poem may be somewhat autobiographical, almost every page has something that forces the reader to stop and think, stop and feel for a moment, because the experiences expressed are universal. The verses contain their own internal logic and meter. Open the book anywhere and read aloud. You will find them carefully crafted.

This is not a work one reads and forgets easily. Only during my second reading did I begin to understand some of the nuances, the subtleties, of the human psyche that Baca portrays. Step outside of the mundane and read `Healing Earthquakes;' you will not be disappointed.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Healing Earthquakes -- an Incredible Epic, December 11, 2002

By	"gimpy_1" (Santa Rosa, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Who is this Jimmy Santiago Baca, this orphaned gangster, jailbird, vata loco, this poet? Baca, who didn't learn to read and write until he was in prison, has created in Healing Earthquakes a work worthy of Whitman, Milton or Dante. The emotional direction for most of this epic poem is downward. He starts at a gentle incline that subtly becomes steeper as he paints pictures of his impoverished but proud background as a Mexican/Indian kid suffering the prejudices around him. Healing Earthquakes then goes deeper into the most magical images of his passionate love to Lisana. But Lisana leaves and Baca walks alone with emptiness and sorrow. By now he is approaching the center of the earth, the First Mother, the heart of the earthquake. His images and rhythm here are black and beautifully angry. Just when the mood of filth and darkness seems inescapable Baca bursts out into the sunlight with "... but I'll sing in the fields, roads, on stages/at every community center and college/and transform your hurt, my hurt, their hurt/into that dream of peace you believed in/... empower(ing)/people who will join me in this dream of yours/to make a more peaceful world. I will!" Healing Earthquakes is not for the faint of heart but if you stay with it, it will open your heart.