LITR 5731: Seminar in American Multicultural Literature

Poetry Presentation, fall 2007

Thursday, 25 October: "History of the Miraculous Apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1531"; Bless Me, Ultima through p. 105 or chapter Diez

Poetry: Jimmy Santiago Baca, "V" from Martin and Meditations on the South Valley

Poetry reader / discussion leader: Corey Porter

Jimmy Santiago Baca

a quick bio: Baca grew up in the “Burque,” where he was abandoned as a child, pushed from his grandparents house into an orphanage, subsequently ran away, was arrested for drug possession and served six years in prison (four in isolation), where he taught himself to read and write.

—from Martin and Meditations on the South Valley (1987).

V

Years pass.
Cattle cars in the downtown freightyard
squeal and groan, and sizzling grills
steam the Barelas Coffee House cafe windows,
as the railroad workers with tin hard hats
stop for coffee, hours of dawn
softly click on grandfather’s gold pocket watches
in Louey’s Broadway Pawnshop, hocked
to get a cousin or brother out of jail
City workers’ tin carts and long-handled dust pans
clatter in curb gutters
as buses spew smoldering exhaust as they stop beneath
Walgreen’s neon liquor sign.
I lean against an office building brick wall,
nothing to do, no where to go,
comb my hair in the blue tinted office windows,
see my reflection in the glinting chromed cars,
on a corner, beneath a smoking red traffic light,
I live—
        blue beanie cap snug over my ears
        down to my brow,
in wide bottomed jean pants trimmed with red braid,
I start my daily walk,
        to the Old Town Post Office,
        condemned Armijo school building,
        Rio Grande playa,
        ditches and underpasses—
de-tribalized Apache
entangled in the rusty barbwire of a society I do not understand,
Mejicano blood in me spattering like runoff water
from a roof canale, glistening over the lives
who lived before me, like rain over mounds of broken pottery,
each day backfills with brown dirt of my dreams.

I lived in the streets,
slept at friends’ houses, spooned
pozole and wiped up the last frijoles with tortilla
from my plate. Each day
my hands hurt for something to have,
and a voice in me yearned to sing,
and my body wanted to shed the gray skin of streets,
like a snake that grew wings—
I wished I had had a chance to be a little boy,
and wished a girl had loved me,
and wished I had a family—but these
were silver inlaid pieces of another man’s life,
whose destiny fountained over stones and ivy
of the courtyard in a fairytale.

Each night I could hear the silver whittling blade
of La Llorona,
carving a small child on the muddy river bottom,
like a little angel carved into ancient church doors.
On Fridays, Jesus Christ appeared
on La Vega road, mounted on a white charger,
his black robe flapping in the moonlight
as he thrashed through bosque brush.
Sometimes Wallei, the voice of water, sang to me,
and Mectallá, who lives in the fire, flew in the air,
and Cuzal, the Reader of Rocks, spoke with a voice
jagged as my street-fighting knuckles.

A voice in me soft as linen
unfolded on midnight air,
to wipe my loneliness away—the voice blew open
like a white handkerchief in the night
embroidered with red roses,
waving and waving from a dark window
at some lover who never returned.

I became a friend of the old women
who hung out by the bars
on Central, Isleta, and Barcelona,
blue tear drops tattooed on their cheeks,
initials of ex-lovers on their hands,
women drawn out from the dark piss-stinking rooms
they lived in,
by the powerful force of the moon,
whose yellow teeth tore the alfalfa out of their hearts,
and left them stubbled,
parched grounds old goats of tecatos and winos
nibbled.

All my life the constant sound of someone’s bootheels
trail behind me—thin, hard,
sharp sounds scraping frozen ground,
like a shovel digging a grave,
It’s my guardian, following me through the broken branches
of the bosque, to the door
of the Good Shepherd Home on south 2nd street,
for a hot meal.

3c. Mexican American narrative: “The Ambivalent Minority”

("Ambivalent" means having "mixed feelings" or contradictory attitudes. Mexican Americans as a group may feel or exemplify mixed feelings about whether they are a distinct, aggrieved minority group or an immigrant culture that will assimilate. As individuals or families who come to America for economic gain but suffer social dislocation, Mexican Americans resemble the dominant immigrant culture. On the other hand, much of Mexico's historic experience with the USA resembles the experience of the Native Americans: much of the United States, including Texas, was once Mexico. Does a Mexican who moves from Juarez to El Paso truly immigrate? In any case, it’s not just another immigrant story.)

 1) V is comprised of personal interaction between Baca and his surroundings. With obj. 3c in mind, how is Baca's relationship with Albuquerque represented? Is Baca casting off his past, or embracing it?

2) What, if any, groups surface within V? Is the poem about this alternative family, or does it celebrate the individual?

 

Extra discussion topic: Chicano or Mexican American?