Singing at the Gates Selected Poems

by Baca, Jimmy Santiago

• ISBN13: 9780802122100
• ISBN10: 0802122108
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-01-07
• Publisher: Grove Press

Summary

Award-winning writer Jimmy Santiago Baca, a vital voice in American poetry, weaves personal and political threads to create a pertinent and poignant narrative infused with vigor and passion, emotional grace and vivid sensory detail. Singing At The Gates is a collection of new and previously published poems that reflect back over four decades of Baca’s life. These are poems that revitalize the national dialogue: raging against war and imprisonment, celebrating family and the bonds of friendship, heightening appreciation for and consciousness of the environment. A career-spanning selection, it includes his early work as a budding poet, written while serving a five-year prison sentence; poems drawn from Baca’s first chapbook; and recent pieces meditating on the significance of breaking through oppression.

Singing at the Gates displays the breadth and depth of Baca's poetic power—with irreverent charm and disarming freedom of mind and soul. The vital pulse of love abiding in these poems will affirm and reaffirm, for both longtime and newfound readers, his devotion to truth and beauty.

Author Biography

Jimmy Santiago Baca has written a novel, a short story collection, fifteen books of poetry, a book of essays, and a teacher/student book set. His memoir, A Place To Stand, won The International Prize. He wrote the feature film Blood In/Blood Out (Touchstone Pictures, 1993), a number of other screenplays, and he wrote/produced three documentaries. He currently lives in Northern New Mexico, on a farm with his family, and he continues to work worldwide teaching literacy.