Jimmy Santiago Bacca

Not sure why, but a Fistful of Dynamite is the phrase that keeps popping into my head when I think of Jimmy Santiago Bacca’s poetry. I realize I’m stealing that from Sergio Leone. I also realize that Clint Eastwood is not Sheryl’s favorite actor. But nevertheless, I keep coming back to it. Maybe because Bacca’s poetry is like something about to explode, like potential energy bottled up in paper and ink. I want to see what happens when it’s released. I want to watch the explosion happen from the margins, letters and numbers flying all over the place.
It could be the lack of articles, the missing prepositions the intentionally left out pronouns, the native tongue that gives it this feeling of energy restrained. Probably the only thing more interesting about Jimmy Santiago Bacca than his poetry is the man himself. “Just do shit,” he said in our roundtable discussion with him before his reading at Chatham. Now that may not be poignant in and of itself, but the advice he gives after that is nothing short of impressive.
Every night that I leave class, on the drive home, I ask myself what poetry is, and why I write it. Occasionally I’ll come up with something good, but by the time I get home I’ve forgotten it already. I like to believe that I’ve thought of something close to the following:
“Get out of your comfort zone. See how people suffer.”
“Just because it’s far away doesn’t mean you can’t be there.”
“Open the lens large and then narrow it down.”
“Have a narrative spine.”
"Believe in the process. Don’t think about results. Think about process.”
“Get out of the ‘write one poem’ frame of mind. If you go to a tree, don’t be so arrogant that you think you know the tree after one poem. Write thirty-eight poems. Then you’ll begin to learn about the tree.”
“What you start, finish. Even if it's crap. Finish the greatest work of crap ever.”
“When I write, I’m telling everyone I love them.”
He’s right. Just because you like something, admire something, even hate something and maybe even spend a little time with it, doesn’t mean you really know it. Take poetry for example. I like to think that at this point I know a little about poetry because I’ve been writing it (or a bastardized version of it) for twenty years now. But I never seem to get the results that I want. I never seem to find the perfect word, the perfect form, the perfect fit. Maybe if I start to write about it I’ll get closer to where I want to be. Maybe if I write thirty-eight poems about poetry, I might actually learn something about it. The same goes for the place I live. I’ve been in Pittsburgh for almost ten years, but I don’t really know it. Thirty-eight poems just might get me closer to my home. It looks like I have some work to do. Thank you, Mr. Bacca. It’s time for me to get started telling people I love them. It's time for me to start working on some of that great crap.