Guzman 1

Giovanni Guzman
Professor Adler
ENG. 1A STACC
13 February 2016
Looking in Depth
Not many people can turn their lives around once they start living a life of crime.
This is not to say that nobody can clean him or herself up and become a productive
member of society. Jimmy Santiago Baca is one such person who was able to go back
onto the right path after being lead astray. Poet, Jimmy Santiago Baca, in his collection of
poems, Singing at the Gates, exhibits how once he found literature he turned his life
around and became a successful poet. He reveals his transformation from a hardened
criminal to a world-renowned poet through one of his poems titled Looking. Baca is
able to illustrate himself as a revitalized human through the poems vivid imagery and
symbolism
Baca is able to showcase his change through his use of vivid imagery throughout
the poem that allows readers to see his transformation begin. Baca starts the poem off
with the words I feel something in me move, which can be interpreted in many ways
but in this case it means his new self, his poetic side is finally surfacing and is fighting to
come out and consume him (1-2). For a large portion of his life, Baca was in and out of
jail and he was consumed into a life of crime. His life made a complete turnaround once
Baca was able to become literate. Baca finally appreciated literature while he was in
prison and through literature he found poetry. Knowing this is crucial to understand when
Baca describes something in [him] move(1-2). He is suggesting that he is no longer the

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criminal he once was and that he has been able to see the light. This explanation is also
evident with the words, one movementcrawls out of the dark in me and that
movement is also suggesting that it is his new self-coming to life right before his eyes (34). In his transformation Baca has finally converted into a poet but he hasnt completely
left his criminal side behind. Instead of completely destroying his past Baca uses his old
self as a building block for his poems. In the poem he even uses the words marry them
which means that he putting his old self and new self together to make his transition
complete (13). The ambiguity in the poem helps portray this sense of transformation.
Baca not only uses vivid imagery to help his readers witness his transformation but he
also uses numerous amount of symbolism in this poem.
Bacas use of symbolism in Looking helps showcase how difficult the struggle
was to become the poet he is today and leave his criminal self aside. He further exhibits
the idea of his transformation by saying a dead hand on bloody drugged knuckles
unfolding, coming to life(5-7) The bloody knuckles are a symbol of his fight and battle
with illiteracy and it shows that Baca had to fight long and hard for his opportunity to
learn the beauty of literature. Once Baca writes the words coming to life, he is telling
us that the battle is over; literacy has finally consumed him and he is no longer struggling
with being illiterate (7). In the second stanza Baca uses a symbol for his hard work to
learn to read and write. Baca is talking about the callousness he wears and that is a
symbol used to show that there was a lot of hard work and effort put into getting his
literacy (10). Baca is able to use these symbols in a way to get his story out there without
really giving us too much information.

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Jimmy Santiago Baca is not the only person to have spent time in prison and was
later able to turn their life around through literature and that person was Malcolm X. In
Malcolm Xs autobiographical, Learning to Read, he shows his struggle to gain
literacy. Malcolm X had as much of a struggle to learn to read as Baca did but once he
was able to cross that hurdle, his life changed forever. He learned to become literate
through writing the words of the dictionary and reading them aloud to himself (Malcolm
X). Once he was able to expand his vocabulary Malcolm X was finally able to read a
book and figure out what it was saying. Malcolm X was so infatuated by books that he
did whatever he could to read them. In his prison cell he would read past lights out and
every time a guard passed by he would jump into bed and feign sleep; he would do this
until 3 or 4 in the morning (Malcolm X). Through literacy he was able to become one of
the most prominent figures in the Civil Rights movement. Both Malcolm X and Jimmy
Santiago Baca had to struggle to change themselves; it did not come overnight and they
are actually similar in many ways. They both spent a large amount of time in prison, it
was there when they finally appreciated literature, it was there that they became literate
and they both became symbols for their own thing. Malcolm X is a symbol in the Civil
Rights movement while Jimmy Santiago Baca has become a figure of a person that was
able to transform himself from a criminal to a poet.
Transforming once self to a different person is never an easy accomplishment and
it takes a lot of effort to kill off old habits. Luckily, Jimmy Santiago Baca was able to do
this and become the poet he is today. He uses his past experiences as a criminal to share
his story in his poems. In one of his poems called Looking he is able to show his
change through the uses of imagery and symbolism. Baca can be compared to Malcolm X

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because they both went through similar challenges and they fought to become the
important figures that they are.

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Works Cited
Baca, Jimmy Santiago. Singing At the Gates: Selected Poems. New York: Grove Press,
2014.
X, Malcolm. Learning to Read. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.