Spring Poems Along the Rio Grande

by Jimmy Santiago Baca

In Spring Poems Along the Rio Grande, Jimmy Santiago Baca continues his daily pilgrimage through the meadows, riverbanks, and bosques of the Rio Grande where winter dies, spring explodes, and inextricable links between the human spirit and the natural world are revealed. In Spring Poems Along the Rio Grande, Jimmy Santiago Baca continues his daily pilgrimage through the meadows, riverbanks, and bosques of the Rio Grande where winter dies, spring explodes, and inextricable links between the human spirit and the natural world are revealed--"the river and I see through each other's skins / behind the eyes into the tunnels of water-bone and rushing marrow." These poems expand upon those in Baca's recent Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande -- his visions of love and loss, poverty and renewal, redemption and war are reflected in the rocks, trees and animals of his beloved New Mexico. In Spring Poems the words of the river "rise around thorny thickets / then descend again into the burbling stubble," and the poet surrenders himself to this place where his own words are woven by "a thumbnail-sized yellow spider/ with poppy seed eyes." Born in New Mexico of Chicano and Apache descent, Jimmy Santiago Baca was raised first by his grandmother, but was later sent with his brother to an orphanage. A runaway at age thirteen, it was after Baca was sentenced to five years in a Federal prison at the age of twenty-one that he began to turn his life around: there he learned to read and write and found his passion for poetry. His memoir A Place To Stand won the prestigious International Award. He is Champion of the International Poetry Slam and winner of The Before Columbus American Book Award and the Pushcart Prize.

Genres: Poetry

75 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2007

About the author

Jimmy Santiago Baca of Apache and Chicano descent is an American poet and writer.

Reviews

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second of Jimmy Santiago Baca's Rio Grande books--I'm assuming there'll be future volumes on summer and autumn--this volume is less anguished than Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande, more celebration than wrestling with the demons that get between human beings and the world we live in. As a result, some of the poems veer towards the gnomic--Santiago Baca certainly isn't afraid of direct statement: "What is broken is blessed." What makes the poems vibrate for me is the way Santiago Baca links those moments to the specific experience of the Rio Grande bisque, often tied to running, which for him is essentially a form of prayer. Santiago Baca is a poetic cousin, younger brother to Gary Snyder, sharing Snyder's belief that the key to understanding your world--which is a mode of connection, not control--is to know your watershed. This volume isn't the one I'd recommend to new readers of Santiago Baca--I'd still start with the volume containing Martin and Meditations on the Valley--but I'm thankful he's still running and writing.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally, "slam poetry" that isn't facile gibberish.

[Nandan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Abandoned by his parents in early childhood, growing up in an orphanage, convicted for a drug dealing charge and having spent close to seven years in prison (three of them in isolation, and with inmates on death row for a period of time) - Jimmy Santiago Baca's background is not uncommon with several children of Chicano and Apache descent growing up poor in New Mexico.

This vivid background is visible - along with the backdrop of Rio Grande, as the title indicates - in this collection. His poems lack the finesse and cleverness of someone like Billy Collins maybe, but the rawness is part of the original appeal.

[Michael Shockley · Rating 2 out of 5]

He starts off strong, but pretty soon starts to nod off, only to bounce back towards the end. At his very best, he reads like a more pagan Walt Whitman, with his striking imagery and colorful lyricism setting the reader up for disappointment towards the middle as he descends into banality, repetition, and hippiedom; he has that strange weakness that afflicts many modern poets, where they try to mask a lack of ideas by filling pages with unnecessary lists of things, usually physical objects, or, in Baca's particular case, birds, and he reuses the same images and concepts over and over again in a way that will grate on your nerves. He tries his hand at politics occasionally, but his resentment prevents him from being able to use subtlety in any meaningful way. There are a few poems worth reading in this one, mostly located at the beginning and the end. Otherwise, this book is a chore.

[Dustin Hanvey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this for my class this term as we prepare to meet the author in April. Baca's story is a very inspiring one, teaching himself to read in prison and becoming a very widely praised poet. Here, he channels the Romantics and writes an introspective stroll through a self-reflective Nature. Though I prefer his memoir, the poetry is alive and imagery rich. The backstory gives it more poignancy.