SOURCE: Rector, Liam. Review of Martín and Meditations on the South Valley, by Jimmy Santiago Baca. Hudson Review 41, no. 2 (summer 1988): 393-400.

In the following excerpt, Rector calls Martín and Meditations on the South Valley an engaging work of combined narrative and lyrical force, and a moving heroic tale in verse.

… First, there's finally something new from New Directions. Not long ago I read every New Directions book I could get my hands on, needing no more than the sight of the publisher's name on the spine to recommend that a book be pulled from the shelf. All publishers lose mortal gas unless they make inroads into the coming generations, and in the last decade or so New Directions has primarily been known for the work it has printed from its fine backlist of authors, such as Hayden Carruth and Denise Levertov. It has fallen mainly to...