SOURCE: “Intuitions of a World in Transition: The New Mexican Poetry of Leroy V. Quintana,” in Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilingue, Vol. 12, Nos. 1 & 2, January, 1985, pp. 62-80.

In the following essay, Benson discusses the role of tradition and intuition as sources of knowledge in Quintana's poetry.

The poetry of Leroy V. Quintana evokes a dense, contradictory world, full of mystery and barely perceived truths—truths not even fully understood by the speakers who translate them for us. In his first two books, Hijo del pueblo (1976) and the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award winner Sangre (1981), Quintana has condensed into brief and seemingly simple poems moments from his lost youth, memories of his ancestors, reactions to the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and signs of the inevitable changes that time imposes on him and on his people.

However, his focus on these things in not merely nostalgic; it is clear...