SOURCE: "Chicano Poetry, Phase III: The Flowering of Flor y Canto," in Chicano Poetry: A Critical Introduction, Greenwood Press, 1986, pp. 137-74.

In the excerpt below, Candelaria offers cultural and intertextual readings of the poems collected in Restless Serpents.

Although Bernice Zamora has been publishing in alternative periodicals since 1970, her first book, Restless Serpents, did not appear until 1976. The warmth of the reception for her book has not been diminished by the absence of a sequel, though it would be received with great interest. "Her poetry is strong and sure of itself," writes [Joe Olvera in American Book Review 2, no. 2 (October 1979)], whereas [Juan Bruce-Novoa, in Latin American Literary Review 5, No. 10 (1977)] is attracted to "Zamora's power [which] lies in the intensity of the strife between love, a metaphor for all the life impulses, and the rigid limits, in any of their varied façades, which restrict life."…

Serving as a...