SOURCE: “The Other Side of the Tracks,” in The Progressive, Vol. 60, No. 9, September, 1996, p. 43.

In the following review, Martinez praises Quintana's poetry for its accessibility, and for the sense of the importance of community she finds in it.

Poetry is not for those who write it; it is for those who need it. This conviction—uttered by a postman who embellishes his love letters with Pablo Neruda's poems in the movie The Postman—goes to the heart of a crisis of meaning haunting United States poetry.

Too many poets, ensconced in academic towers of Babel, write for learned elites. With slow book sales and poor attendance at readings, they blame poetry's difficulties on the sorry state of American culture. What is to be done, asks literary critic Dana Gioia in a book titled, Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and American Culture.

The answer depends on which side...