Poetry and personal circumstance, each inextricably linked to the other in a complete and unbroken cycle, are indispensable elements in coming to know and understand the poetic voice and the artistic development of Jimmy Santiago Baca, an award-winning poet who is the author of two chapbooks and five larger collections of poems. Baca's work has been widely anthologized and has appeared in such respected literary publications as Ironwood, Bilingual Review, Harbor Review, Confluencia, Las Américas, New Kauri, Quarterly West, Puerto del Sol, and several others. In 1987 he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant for poetry, and in 1988 he was the recipient of the Before Columbus American Book Award in poetry for his book Martín and Meditations on the South Valley (1987). He has been a poet in residence at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Yale University, having received the Berkeley...