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 engagé (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.
