Spring Poems Along The Rio Grande [Paperback]

Jimmy Santiago Baca (Author)

List Price:	CDN$ 16.00
Price:	CDN$ 12.62 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 25. Details
You Save:	CDN$ 3.38 (21%)
	o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca. Gift-wrap available.

Only 1 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).

Want it delivered Monday, February 13? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout.

Product Details

Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: New Directions; 1 edition (Mar 27 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0811216853
ISBN-13: 978-0811216852
Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.3 x 0.7 cm
Shipping Weight: 91 g
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #774,154 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Once imprisoned, now celebrated nationally as a performer, poet and memoirist (A Place to Stand), Baca returns to the terrain, forms and concerns of Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande (2004) in this perhaps less ambitious sequel. Vivid free verse alternates description of the Texas-Mexico border (a site for the poet's regular walks and runs) with hopes and fears for the poet and for his nations. "Landscapes of war,/ people starving,/ refugees waving for us to help them" represent the hard politics of the present, competing for attention with the poet's difficult past ("when my life/ blew from street corner to street corner/ in menial work") and with what seem to be memories of sex addiction, the years when "my love/ was a madness." Baca tries both to envision a brighter future and to live fully, attentively, in the present, noticing both clear spots of natural beauty and incursions of things manmade, from the feather of a long-sought blue heron to "the green irrigation pipe-gates/ that mark the end of my run south." Fans of his earlier performance poetry may appreciate his new work's warmth, or wish it edgier, less suffused with optimism ("what is broken God blesses"). Against all his worries, all his reasons to despair, Baca again and again turns back to the border landscape he loves and trusts: "The Rio Grande bosque/ doesn't lie-when it's ready to show affection/ it does."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Baca continues his meditation on seasons, beginning where his previous collection, Winter Poems along the Rio Grande (2004), left off. The Rio Grande, as both setting and symbol of freedom and life, meanders through the poems, evoking a natural progression of time and the natural ebb and flow of feelings such as love, hope, and connection. The bosque along the river is home to birds both resident and migratory, trees, fish, bushes, insects, and encroaching urban life represented by power lines and interstate traffic noise. Jogging here, Baca evinces a love of his hometown of Albuquerque but, even more, reveals his well of poetic inspiration: Chicano, Catholic religiosity, Native American symbolism, and universal milestones. River, season, and life all cycle in natural harmony, and offer both mirror and magnifying glass, allowing access to our deeper truths. With its highly accessible language and thoughtful reflections on the natural world, readers will find Baca's poetry extremely inviting. Janet St. John
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Product Description

Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
This winter has been a mild one, snow melted away by noon no heavy gusts toppled elms or cracked cottonwoods-they passed by as if I were in a train watching them from the window, rushing through-everyone around me speaking a foreign language, traveling away from what is broken leaving landscapes of war, people starving, refugees waving for us to help them, homes they once loved in and slept and ate in bombed to rubble. Read the first page

Explore More
Concordance

Tag this product

(What's this?)

Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.

Customer Reviews

There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon Canada

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

Share your experience with this product with others

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com ^(beta)

Amazon.com: 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)

5.0 out of 5 stars What Is Broken Is What God Blesses, Mar 27 2010

By John Michael Albert "John-Michael Albert" - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: Spring Poems Along The Rio Grande (Paperback)

Santiago Baca's powerful struggle to reinterpret life and living in terms of nature, started in Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande, continues and is brought to a stunning conclusion in the final poem, "What Is Broken Is What God Blesses." Gradually through the Spring poems, he welcomes more and more people into his conversation with nature, his ancestors, people from his past, current friends and lovers, the other self with whom he has shared his life, strangers whose presence is evident from the footpaths that break from his running trail and head for the river, tiny footprints in the dust, or the chain sawed trunks and branches cleared from the same path. We often have to separate things to clearly understand them before reuniting them. Only a poet could say it so well, could take you along and help you experience every step of the process, could bring you so successfully to the end, banged up and new.

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see the review 5.0 out of 5 stars