SOURCE: Hogan, Michael. Review of What's Happening, by Jimmy Santiago Baca. American Book Review 6, no. 1 (November-December 1983): 19-20.

In the following review of What's Happening, Baca's third volume of verse, Hogan highlights the disappointments in this collection as Baca fails to adequately control his powerful and passionate poetic voice.

Jimmy Santiago Baca first sent poems to me when I was working as an editor of an anthology of prison poetry in 1974. I noticed then two strengths which contained within them a strong potential for weakness if his craft were not carefully controlled or if he became too impressed by academia's wooing of the imprisoned or alienated minorities. The first strength was that he wrote primarily from an emotional rather than a rational language. This, while offering a passion and a color to his language, offered as well the possibility that his work could become didactic or self-indulgent.

His second...