Poetry is What We Speak to Each Other

KEENE: Mr. Baca, in your book of essays, Working in the Dark: Reflections of a Poet of the Barrio, you speak at length and eloquently about how the school system completely failed you-and how it fails so many young people, especially so many young people of color-and how you had to teach yourself, as a young adult and while in prison, first to read and then to write. Reading and writing, especially writing poetry, were vital to you in the beginning: you were using poems to survive, to barter for things among your fellow prisoners. Would you please tell me more about your early development as a poet

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