An internationally acclaimed artist whose work has been honored with inclusion in both the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial, James Drake has explored political, social, and universal themes through the media of sculpture, video, installation, photography, and drawing. James Drake, the first monograph devoted to the artist, surveys thirty-five years of Drake's work up to 2007. Many of the works reproduced in James Drake reflect the artist's preoccupation with borders. Some have to do with the political border between the United States and Mexico and the inherent social and psychological tensions of people living in its extreme and unique environment. Other works explore the internal boundaries that people experience as a result of attitudes, prejudices, power, control, and arrogance. Jimmy Santiago Baca's narrative poem Huitzilopochtli, a personal response to Drake's work, provides a verbal counterpart to the artist's theme of border-crossing. Another prominent subject in Drake's work is the relationship of people and animals—in particular, the animality that always lurks in human behavior. In his essay "Between Animality and Man," critic Steven Henry Madoff traces this subject through Drake's work and shows how Drake uses it to contrast the forces of intellect and instinct, light and darkness. Interspersed among the color plates are quotations from writers as varied as Cormac McCarthy and Dante. Also accompanying the plates and essays is an introduction by Bruce W. Ferguson, a nationally known art curator, educator, and critic, that places Drake's work in an art historical context. Lists of James Drake's works, exhibitions, public collections, and awards, as well as a bibliography of works about Drake, complete this first retrospective of the oeuvre of this major, socially concerned artist, who always "tries to make work as exciting, powerful, and thought-provoking as possible."

James Drake (M. Georgia Hegarty Dunkerley Contemporary Art Series)

Arts & Photography

BACA, JIMMY SANTIAGO

Madoff, Steven Henry

MCCARTHY, CORMAC

History & Criticism

University of Texas Press

Three poetic statements unite and intertwine in this slim volume to create a rare insight into the lives of people who bear witness to the exclusionary nature of society's most basic assumptions about the nature of gender and desire: men in women's bodies, outcasts, who make their living as prostitutes. With the caring eye of an intimate observer, Benjamin Alire S‡enz allows the reader to witness the hopes, fears and dangers of their transformations, sketching their daily lives in a series of short fragmentary prose-poems, showing the familiarity of the seemingly alien. Jimmy Santiago Baca's first person poem pushes the transformation further still, allowing as well as forcing the reader to recognize the frailty and pain caused by a culture's ideas of what constitutes the normal. James Drake's photographs unite the poems, complementing them with a visual thread of equally poetic intensity: changing faces, reflections in mirrors, blood and fears, as well as hopes and guardian angels

Que Linda LA Brisa

Sáenz, Benjamin Alire

Drake, James

Pamela Auchincloss Gallery (New York, N. Y.)

Individual Artists

Pamela Auchincloss Gallery

The Importance of a Piece of Paper: Stories

Literature & Fiction

Distributed by Random House

One of America's leading poets describes his youth in New Mexico, his troubled adolescence, his years as a drug dealer in Arizona and San Diego, and the personal redemption that occurred after he was arrested and sent to prison.

A Place to Stand: The Making of a Poet

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Grove Pr

In a first fiction collection by an award-winning poet, a pair of siblings confront a betraying brother and place their community in jeopardy, a long-suffering mother's efforts to reunite her offspring has tragic consequences, and a young orphan cares for a boy whose circumstances are worse than his own.

United States

GROVE PRESS

Award-winning memoirist, poet, and activist, Jimmy Santiago Baca has established himself as an inspiring and important spokesperson for the Chicano experience, continually giving voice to the voiceless. His first novel, A Glass of Water is a gripping tale of family, loyalty, ambition, and revenge that takes us inside the tragedies unfurling along our country’s borders. Having made the nearly deadly journey across the border from Mexico, Casimiro and Nopal spend their days in the chili fields, building a life for their young sons. But when Nopal is brutally murdered, the boys are left to navigate this capricious new world without her. The elder son, Lorenzo, follows his father’s footsteps, devoting himself to the land, and falling in love with a strong-minded young woman who’s come to their migrant camp to study the lives of its workers. But Vito, hot-blooded and restless, breaks away to find fame as an itinerant boxer, gaining notoriety inside the ring and out. Eventually, the brothers’ journeys converge, bringing them face to face with a common enemy. A Glass of Water is a searing, heartfelt tribute to brotherhood, and an arresting portrait of the twisted paths people take to claim their piece of the American dream.

A Glass of Water

Award-winning writer Jimmy Santiago Baca, a vital voice in American poetry, weaves personal and political threads to create a pertinent and poignant narrative infused with vigor and passion, emotional grace and vivid sensory detail. Singing At The Gates is a collection of new and previously published poems that reflect back over four decades of Baca’s life. These are poems that revitalize the national dialogue: raging against war and imprisonment, celebrating family and the bonds of friendship, heightening appreciation for and consciousness of the environment. A career-spanning selection, it includes his early work as a budding poet, written while serving a five-year prison sentence; poems drawn from Baca’s first chapbook; and recent pieces meditating on the significance of breaking through oppression. Singing at the Gates displays the breadth and depth of Baca's poetic powerwith irreverent charm and disarming freedom of mind and soul. The vital pulse of love abiding in these poems will affirm and reaffirm, for both longtime and newfound readers, his devotion to truth and beauty.

Singing at the Gates: Selected Poems

Award-winning writer Jimmy Santiago Baca is acclaimed for his talent in weaving personal and political threads to create pertinent and poignant narratives. He addresses universal issues with vigor and passion as well as emotional grace and vivid sensory detail, establishing him as a vital voice in American poetry. Singing at the Gates is a collection of Baca’s work that stretches back over four decades. These poems revitalize the national dialogue: raging against war and imprisonment, fighting for prison reform, celebrating family and the bonds of friendship, heightening appreciation for and consciousness of the environment. A career-spanning selection, it includes his early work as a budding poetwritten during his years in the penitentiary, where he taught himself to read and writein addition to poems from his first chapbook and recent pieces meditating on the significance of breaking through adversity and oppression. From outraged to serene, playful to meditative, Baca’s voice is robust, searing, sensuous, and tender. This arresting collection displays the breadth and depth of Baca’s poetic powerwith irreverent charm and disarming freedom of mind and soul. The vital pulse of love abiding in these poems will affirm and reaffirm, for both longtime and newfound readers, his devotion to truth and beauty.

Combining a stunning lyrical intensity with a profound exploration of the human soul, Healing Earthquakes uses poetry to conjure a romance, from beginning to end. Jimmy Santiago Baca introduces us to a man and woman before they are acquainted and re-creates their first meeting, falling in love, their decision to make a family, the eventual realization of each other's irreconcilable faults, the resulting conflicts, the breakup and hostility, and, finally, their transcendence of the bitterness and resentment. Throughout the relationship we are privy to the couple's astonishing range of emotions: the anguish of loneliness, the heady rush of new love, the irritations and joys of raising children, the difficulties in truly knowing someone, the doldrums of breakup, and so on. It is impossible not to identify with these characters and to recognize one's own experience in theirs. As he weaves this story, Baca explores many of his traditional themes: the beauty and cruelty of the desert lands where he has spent much of his life, the grace and wisdom of animals, the quiet dignity of life on small Chicano farms. This is an extraordinary work from one of our finest poets.

Healing Earthquakes: Poems

Poetry

A Place To Stand

Jimmy Santiago Baca's harrowing, brilliant memoir of his life before, during, and immediately after the years he spent in a maximum-security prison garnered tremendous critical acclaim and went on to win the prestigious 2001 International Prize. Long considered one of the best poets in America today, Baca was illiterate at the age of twenty-one and facing five to ten years behind bars for selling drugs. A Place to Stand is the remarkable tale of how he emerged after his years in the penitentiary -- much of it spent in isolation -- with the ability to read and a passion for writing poetry. A vivid portrait of life inside a maximum-security prison and an affirmation of one man's spirit in overcoming the most brutal adversity, A Place to Stand "stands as proof there is always hope in even the most desperate lives" -- (Fort Worth Morning Star-Telegram). "A Place to Stand is a hell of a book, quite literally. You won't soon forget it." -- Luis Urrea, The San Diego Union-Tribune "This book will have a permanent place in American letters." -- Jim Harrison

A Place to Stand

Reference

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by BACA, JIMMY SANTIAGO. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by BACA, JIMMY SANTIAGO

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by BACA, JIMMY SANTIAGO. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

James Drake (M. Georgia Hegarty Dunkerley Contemporary Art Series)

Que Linda LA Brisa

The Importance of a Piece of Paper: Stories

A Place to Stand: The Making of a Poet

The Importance of a Piece of Paper: Stories

A Glass of Water

Singing at the Gates: Selected Poems

Singing at the Gates: Selected Poems

Healing Earthquakes: Poems

A Place to Stand