SOURCE: Arias, Ron. Review of Immigrants In Our Own Land, by Jimmy Santiago Baca. American Book Review 4, no. 2 (January-February 1982): 11-12.

In the following review of Baca's first poetic collection, Arias surveys the “gifted” poet's autobiographical journeys of discovery, his essay-like observational pieces, and scattered protest verses.

A poet named Jimmy Santiago Baca is running around a prison track field when he stops to look at a chain gang pulling weeds by the prison preacher's house. It's hot and in the distance away from the prison is a nearby town courthouse. In the shade, a hard-eyed preacher, sipping tea, watches the men work.

Suddenly Baca's thoughts explode. Why don't the men tear down the courthouse? Why don't they burn the preacher's house? Why don't they eliminate him, that “lazy glob of pulpish meat”?

Of course, nothing happens, Baca's eyes and thoughts clear, and he ends his poem—“On a...