As a young poet Richard García was several years ahead of his time. His first book, Selected Poetry (1973), charted a new direction for Chicano poetry when hardly anyone was listening. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s Chicano poets attracted audiences with a powerful mix of social narrative and personal lyricism, combining Chicano oral tradition with English and Spanish vernacular idioms. Selected Poetry was written in English and introduced a sophisticated symbolic and metaphysical aesthetic that read more like magical realism than Chicano movement poetry. Nevertheless, the editors of El Grito claimed in the Winter 1971 issue that "Richard García is without question one of the finest young Chicano poets in the country." García's innovations did not, however, win popular approval. For several years his poetic path seemed to be the road not taken by the majority of Chicano authors. Nor was the...