Assignment 2 : Critical Response to the Poetry 
of Jimmy Santiago Baca
Write a four-seven page analysis of some aspect of Jimmy Santiago Baca’s poetry exploring a theme, imagery, tone, style, language, and/or his use of symbols. You may select a poem for a close, line-by-line reading, or you may focus on a theme carried through the work, such as the narrator’s need to find out more about his parents or his longing for a place to belong. Focus your essay with a strong central idea (thesis), and use examples from the text to support your analysis. Use quotes or paraphrase from the text or other sources where appropriate. Use MLA format for documentation, and include a works cited page.
Literary critics interpret texts using a variety of approaches. Review the types of literary criticism. I have listed a few here that you might consider useful for your essay.

Reader-response criticism: This type of criticism involves looking at how the reader comes to understand a text. For example, using the reader-response approach, you might describe your process of coming to understand a poem or short section of Baca’s poetry.

New Historicism: New historicist critics look at the impact of the politics, ideologies, and social customs of the author’s world on the themes, images, and characterizations of a text. This type of critic considers the historical events or conditions during which the work was written.

Psychoanalytic criticism: This type of criticism views the themes, conflicts, and characterizations of a work primarily as a reflection of the needs, emotions, states of mind, or subconscious desires of the author.

Formalist criticism: Formalist critics look closely at the work itself, analyzing the various elements of the work as a way of explicating or interpreting a text.
Process suggestions:
  1. Review the lectures on Martin & Meditations on the South Valley (Lecture 4 or 5), suggestions for reading poetry, or literary terms related to poetry to refresh your memory about important themes in Baca's work and the elements of poetry.
  2. Look back at your reading journal and/or postings on our class discussion board to get ideas about a possible theme to explore or an approach to this essay.
  3. Brainstorm ideas for writing by doing a cluster, list, mind-map, or freewrite about your response.
  4. Use the glossaries at the back of the book and a dictionary for help with defining key words. Looking up a complex word, even if you already know what it means, can strengthen your close reading of a poem. Consider the fact that words possess not only dictionary meanings—denotations—but also many associations and suggestions—connotations.
  5. Read aloud a poem or section of Baca’s work. Through your oral reading, you may hear emotions or moods which are less obvious when the work is read-on-the-page. Listen to shifts in tone or uses of irony that might help you understand the poem’s meaning.
  6. Pay attention to recurring symbols and images in the poems and reflect on their possible meanings or associations.
  7. Compare the poem’s themes, descriptions of people or events, and exploration of values with your own experiences, observations, or values.
  8. Discuss your questions, ideas, and responses to the poems with a classmate or another person.
  9. Listen to Baca read his own work at the following website: http://www.poetrypoetry.com/Features/JSBaca/JSBaca.html
  10. Research literary critics, additional writings by the author, or biographical information to help you develop your interpretation.
  11. Share your rough draft with your small group. Ask for specific feedback on parts of the essay you’re unsure about. You may also submit your rough drafts to the campus Writing Center for help.

REMINDERS

As always, be sure to focus your essay with a strong central idea (thesis), and use examples from the text to support your analysis.

Use MLA format for documentation, and include a works cited page with your essay. See a good handbook or the OWL website for suggestions on writing about poetry and information on MLA guidelines.

Refer to the narrator or the speaker of the poem as Martin (not Baca).

You may want to review a style handbook for help with quoting poetry. Briefly, remember to use slashes / to represent line breaks in a poem, eg.: "Teenage years/I sought that dark connection/of words become actions, of dreams made real…" (Baca 6).

For quotes of four lines or more, use block quotes and keep double-spacing and original line breaks, eg.:

Teenage years,
I sought that dark connection
of words become actions, of dreams made real,
like Tijerina’s courthouse raid,
of Cesar Chavez and thousands of braceros
enduring the bloody stubs of police batons
that beat them as they marched. (Baca 6)

Review block quotes and the correct way to quote poetry. See OWL’s page on block quotes and quoting poetry.

Don't over-use quotes. Only about 10% of your paper should be in direct quotes. See OWL's page on quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing for help.

Use ellipses to leave out sections of the quote you don't need. Indicate the portion you’ve left out of a quote by using ellipses, eg.: "Teenage years/I sought that dark connection/ … of dreams made real…." (Baca 6).

Be sure to interpret the quotes you include. Incorporate quotes smoothly into your essay by making a point, introducing the quote, and then interpreting the quote at the end of the paragraph. It's generally not effective to start or end a paragraph with a quote.