The Esai Poems

Book excerpt: American Book Award-winning poet Jimmy Santiago Baca endured years in the penal system before becoming a writer and a father. In these collections of strikingly expressive verse, Baca celebrates parenthood and presents the complexities of adult life in the age of 9/11 and the Iraq War. An essential voice in world poetry, Baca chronicles the changes that envelop him upon the birth of his children, Lucia and Esai. Recalling the works of other poets who passed through the horrors of extreme experience–Nazim Hikmet, Paul Celan, Joseph Brodsky, Alexander Wat, Otto René Castillo, and more–The Lucia Poems and The Esai Poems give poignant acknowledgement to one generation’s failings and pass on humane advice to the next. Taken together as Breaking Bread with the Darkness, these two collections offer a poetic primer for paternity, and a model for teaching history, politics, spirituality, and survival. Jimmy Santiago Baca is an award-winning poet, internationally known for his lyrical, politically charged verse. Of Apache and Chicano ancestry, at the age of twenty-one he was convicted on drug charges and spent over six years in prison, where he found his voice as a poet through correspondence with Denise Levertov of Mother Jones. His books include the poetry collections C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans, Set This Book on Fire, Black Mesa Poems, Poems Taken from My Yard, and What's Happening; a memoir, A Place to Stand; a play, Los tres hijos de Julia; a screenplay for the film Blood In Blood Out; and the novel A Glass of Water. He has published three eBooks with Restless Books: The Face and two Breaking Bread with the Darkness poetry volumes. Baca is the winner of the Pushcart Prize, the American Book Award, the International Hispanic Heritage Award, and, for A Place to Stand, the prestigious International Award. Baca has devoted his post-prison life to writing and teaching others who are overcoming hardship. His themes include American Southwest barrios, addiction, injustice, education, and cultural difference. He regularly conducts writing workshops in prisons, community centers, and universities throughout the country.