SOURCE: "Rituals of Devastation and Resurrection: Bernice Zamora," in his Chicano Poetry: A Response to Chaos, University of Texas Press, 1982, pp. 160-84.

In the excerpt below, Bruce-Novoa examines the snake image and the importance of ritual in Restless Serpents, stating that Zamora's poetry "traces the move from sacred to profane structuring of society and attempts to find relief from the concomitant loss of meaning and alienation which that change produces."

Having been born into a family that can trace its presence in Southern Colorado and New Mexico back some two centuries; having grown up among rural, traditional people who practiced the centuries-old religious rites of the Penitentes and treated land as sacred, it is no wonder that Bernice Zamora would preoccupy herself with the state of the cultural spirit. That it, like the spiritual condition of modern society in general, is not at its best explains in part...