Half Starts and Trail Offs

Poetry and Social Change

Apr 15

AvelinoPoetry Avelino Maestas, guest blogger, Jimmy Santiago Baca, national poetry month, New Mexico, poetry and social change 3 Comments

Today’s guest blogger is one of my favorite people in the world, Avelino Maestas. I was happily surprised when he agreed to get in on the poetry blogging this month, and I think you’ll enjoy his insights into New Mexican poet Jimmy Santiago Baca and his unique perspective on poetry in general. Enjoy!

Meredith and I were recently discussing the subtle differences between her high-school education and mine. We’re both pretty smart, but in talking about the past we learned that there were more classes available to me than to her—I took AP Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Computer Science, History, American Government and, of course, English. I took four years of English in high school, and tested out of the entry-level stuff in college.

And you know, there was no poetry.

Sure there were some sprinkles here and there, but it was all old. Like, Beowulf old. Poetry was never something I sought out either, much to my detriment. Even still, today, I’m a non-fiction guy.

But I love me some Jimmy Santiago Baca.

Six years ago I was sitting at a desk at WNMU, where I was the editor for the student newspaper. I was reading some blog post or another, and the author had included a snippet of  ”A Daily Joy to Be Alive.”

I continually find myself in the ruins
of new beginnings,
uncoiling the rope of my life
to descend ever deeper into unknown abysses,
tying my heart into a knot
round a tree or boulder,
to insure I have something that will hold me,
that will not let me fall.

I was hooked, and it’s easy to understand why. Here was a man born in New Mexico, who wrote about such familiar subjects: food and family, friends going their separate ways, the impact of water on life in the Southwest.

As I’ve grown older, my appreciation for Baca’s poetry has grown as well. I’ve come to better understand the struggles that led him to explore poetry in the first place. And I’ve learned how powerful poetry can be in swaying the hearts and minds of others. A photograph may be worth a thousand words, but a few well-written words from a unique perspective can paint an incredible picture. Poetry connects the reader to the writer in ways that no other medium can approach. Its capacity to engender empathy is unmatched, and its ability to pull the heartstrings is the basis for every song we’ve ever loved.

So, I wanted to share with you “Immigrants In Our Own Land,” a wonderful example of Baca pulling the reader out of her comfort zone to examine something deeper.

My cell is crisscrossed with laundry lines,
my T-shirts, boxer shorts, socks and pants are drying.
Just like it used to be in my neighborhood:
from all the tenements laundry hung window to window.
Across the way Joey is sticking his hands
through the bars to hand Felipe a cigarette,
men are hollering back and forth cell to cell,
saying their sinks don’t work,
or somebody downstairs hollers angrily
about a toilet overflowing,
or that the heaters don’t work.

The imagery in Baca’s poetry astounds me, and at times, belittles me. He’s so good at transporting you somewhere, at subtly whisking you away and planting you in his shoes. And then the subtlety ends:

But in the end, some will just sit around
talking about how good the old world was.
Some of the younger ones will become gangsters.
Some will die and others will go on living
without a soul, a future, or a reason to live.
Some will make it out of here with hate in their eyes,
but so very few make it out of here as human
as they came in, they leave wondering what good they are now
as they look at their hands so long away from their tools,
as they look at themselves, so long gone from their families,
so long gone from life itself, so many things have changed.

Since I met Meredith, I’ve learned more and more about poetry. I love to read her poems, and I love when she reads those that she finds interesting or moving. Sometimes I’ll sneak a book away from her collection and expand my horizons. But I’ll always view poetry through the prism of social change, and its ability to bridge the distances that separate us from one another.