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Jimmy Santiago Baca (2 January 1952 / Santa Fe, New Mexico)
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Jimmy Santiago Baca is an American Poet and writer.
Life and Career
Jimmy Santiago Baca was born in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, in 1952. Abandoned by his parents at the age of two, he lived with one of his grandmothers for several years before being placed in an orphanage. He wound up living on the streets, and at the age of twenty-one he was convicted on charges of drug possession and incarcerated. He served six and a half years in prison, three of them in isolation, and having expressed a desire to go to school (the guards considered this dangerous), he was for a time put in the same area of the prison with the inmates on death row before he was ... more »
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Popular Poems
- A Daily Joy to be Alive
- Ancestor
- As Children Know
- As Life Was Five
- Choices
- Cloudy Day
- Count-time
- El Gato
- From Violence to Peace
- Green Chile
- I Am Offering This Poem
- Immigrants in Our Own Land
- Into Death Bravely
- It would be neat if with the New Year
Comments about Jimmy Santiago Baca
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I am a poetry student at NMHU and saw Jimmy Santiago Baca reach out to his community with all his heart. Although I am white and a transplant to the state of NM, I saw that the local young men really were toughed as was a young black guy from California. NM and all other states should have more inspirational artists like Jimmy coming to tell stories and read aloud to a community to which they relate to and we wouldn't have so much crime, misunderstanding and the damnation of the few good men who still exist amongst an all- too- often cruel world. Even as I could not relate to the culture since I didn't grow up here, Baca was an inspiration and example that people have the control to become who they want to be even when their past circumstances have all but withered their desire to live! Thanks Jimmy Santiago Baca for being an inspiration for a better life in NM and for the young people who don't have the comforts of life handed to them on a silver platter! !
Willy, my old friend. I'm afraid you're mistaken, yet again... but I forgive you. And a poem is something like what Mr. Baca, a poet, made. The following is one of my favorite quotes from his poem 'Green Chile':
'I prefer...my eggs and potatoes for breakfast... in the wind... licking the breeze.'
Oh, and:
'But grandmother loves... sweating over the stove...for a dollar a bag...'
Those quotes really capture the true meaning of the poem, in my opinion.
*kfffffffff kfffffffff kfffffffff*
Two more questions:
1) What's a poem?
b) I'm so cool.
*psssssst* (whispers)
Hey. Who is Jimmy Santiago Baca and what does he do?