"Black Mesa Poems" by Jimmy Santiago Baca

I've been reading Baudelair's The Flowers of Evil and have been enjoying the "anti-romanticism" that takes place within his poetry. I kind of found the same thing going on in Baca's poems. This may be a stretch on my own part. A forced connection. But it's interesting, nonetheless.

Baudelair wrote about terrible things with beautiful language to the point where the terrible seemed beautiful. In a way, that is what Baca is doing. Baca had spent time behind bars, but in his poetry, where these bars are not seen and this inprisonment is not on the surface, Baca uses beautiful, natural imagery--imagery of things that flow freely and grow wildly--as commentary or stark contrast to how his life was behind those bars. In other words, like Baudelaire, he is using beautiful imagery to talk about something terrible.

Behind every natural element portrayed in his poetry, there seems to be a dark shadow or a cold wind that is promised. It is not exactly seen or felt, but the reader knows it is there or is expecting for it to arise. In his poem "Fall", this takes place. Here is the first stanza.

Somber hue diffused on everything.
Each creature, each emptied corn stalk,
is richly bundled in mellow light.
In that open unharvested field of my own life,
I have fathered small joys and memories.
My heart was once a lover's swing that creaked in wind
of these calm fall days.
Autumn chants my visions to sleep,
and travels me back into a night
when I could touch stars and believed in myself.

Beautiful imagery is used here, but there are words that leave an unsettling feeling. Adjectives: somber, emptied, mellow, unharvested, creaked. And there are phrases and the use of the past tense that ensure us that the present is not as sweet: emptied, I have fathered, small joys, was once, chants my visions to sleep, travels me back, when I could....

All of these words and phrases are not promising of any light, but the language itself is gorgeous.

His poems are also very solitary. The other "characters" in his poems are typically not human, which reflects the solitude that he must have grown accustomed to in his tumultuous life. These poems surely ring as poems written by a man whose father was absent. A man who is troubled in one way or another. I just scowled at myself for writing that previous sentence. I feel like a quack of a psychologist. But his poems are very solitary. He is his only character for the most part. He walks on streets alone. He stands behind bars, peering down into tiers. He likens himself to a tree. Even in poems that do consist of other characters, he is a lonesome, child-like character.

It is difficult these days for poets to not write poems with "I", "me", "myself", or "mine" in it. I wonder how difficult of a task this would be for Baca...to write a poem that reflects absolutely who he is, but without the use of those simple words. To use the landscape or the characterizations of other people to show or tell who he really is as a poet. I think that would make an interesting exercise for any poet. Write about yourself without talking about yourself.