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Working in The Dark

The poet reflects on how writing poetry helped him through his imprisonment. Through writing about the weeds outside his cell window, he was able to transport himself outside of himself and feel free. Writing bridged his life as a prisoner and as a free man, allowing him to express the emotional trauma of prison but also find empathy and compassion. He wrote to sublimate his rage over the injustices he faced and to affirm his love of life.

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236 views

Working in The Dark

The poet reflects on how writing poetry helped him through his imprisonment. Through writing about the weeds outside his cell window, he was able to transport himself outside of himself and feel free. Writing bridged his life as a prisoner and as a free man, allowing him to express the emotional trauma of prison but also find empathy and compassion. He wrote to sublimate his rage over the injustices he faced and to affirm his love of life.

Uploaded by

aekulak
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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“Working in the Dark”

Jimmy Santiago Baca


Reflections of a Poet in the Barrio

I was born a poet one noon, gazing at weeds and creosoted


grass at the base of a telephone pole outside my grilled cell
window. The words I wrote then sailed me out of myself, and I
was transported and metamorphosed into the images they
made. From the dirty brown blades of grass came bolts of
electrical light that jolted loose my old self; through the top of
my head that self was released and reshaped in the clump of
scrawny grass. Through language I became the grass, speaking
its language and feeling its green feelings and black root
sensations. Earth was my mother and I bathed in sunshine.
Minuscule speckles of sunlight passed through my green skin
and metabolized in my blood.

Writing bridged my divided life of prisoner and free man. I wrote


of the emotional butchery of prisons, and of my acute gratitude
for poetry. Where my blind doubt and spontaneous trust in life
met, I discovered empathy and compassion. The power to
express myself was a welcome storm rasping at tendril roots,
flooding my soul’s cracked dirt. Writing was water that
cleansed the wound and fed the parched root of my heart.

I wrote to sublimate my rage, from a place where all hope is


gone, from a madness of having been damaged too much, from
a silence of killing rage. I wrote to avenge the betrayals of a
lifetime, to purge the bitterness of injustice. I wrote with a deep
groan of doom in my blood, bewildered and dumbstruck; from
an indestructible love of life, to affirm breath and laughter and
the abiding innocence of things. I wrote the way I wept, and
danced and made love.

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