Response to Baca's Poem

I would like to respond to something we touched on only briefly in class, and that's the aggressive tone used throughout Baca's poem. Although many of us harbor sympathy for Baca's perceptive, I think it's important to look at the work's rhetoric objectively. And to me, doing so reveals the shortcoming of the poem's conceit.

Anger in poetry can be expressed more effectively with subtlety and metaphor. Baca, perhaps through his rage, rejects the traditional poetic tools available to the poet and plunges into a rant, one that does not defend itself against its own emotions. The question of audience comes into play; however, strong poetry should be felt by myriad peoples, regardless of racial and ethnic backgrounds. This is where Baca fails--by his dehumanizing the antagonist while refusing to relent his heated tone, he loses his credibility as historian/poet.

We can look at someone like Matrin Espada as an example of a poet using the finest poetic rhetoric and techniques to compound a critical tone in a way that can touch all readers, mostly because it attempts, through the Hispanic immigrants plight, to reach deeper into the human emotions the lie there. This gives the poem a touch of the universal and therefore makes it more lasting, even more accessible. Here is a link to Espada's poem, an ode to Hispanic workers killed in the 9/11 attacks: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177383

Espada uses a very American and universal tragedy as a means of exploring the more specific cultural narrative of latino workers in the food and restaurant industry. Rather than pushing the subject on the reader, he invites the reader into his world and, not unlike Virgil to Dante, leads us through the poem as a trustworthy and grounded voice.

Sure, we can understand Baca's frustration, even share it with him. However, it's important to ask the question: Would someone alien to these politics, say someone form China or Lithuania, trust a voice like Baca's?

-Ocean