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Marisol Meza
Professor Adler
STACC- English 1A-32475
February 26, 2016
Poetic Confinement:
A Poetry Analysis of Jimmy Santiago Baca, Signing at the Gates
There is a notion and a bias perception of what society assumes as the comfy life which
our prisoners live. The actual comfort level of prison life is not only a misperception, but far cry
from the bleak reality. In the poetry book, by Jimmy Santiago Baca, Singing at the Gates. Baca
reminds us of the unjust and bias assumptions and prejudice of world. The government and the
public, long ago, decided to lock up all the offenders which choose to not live by the publics
rules and standards and simply forget about their entire existence. We lock up the bad and
confidently affirm that we are rid of the wrong-doers and the non-elite members of the world. We
affirm that the righteous of society should never be subjective to intertwine amongst the
criminals. However, we often judge and wrongly assume the life of prisoner is an free-ride and a
tax-payers vacationers dream. We wrongly judge and assume the life of a prisoner is filled with
leisure and bliss content. In Bacas poetry he constantly recants through the use of vivid
metaphors of darkness to provide his reader the mental image of the true reality of a prison.
Baca illustrates through his language an array of hopelessness and human degradation. He uses a
sympathetic tone to appeal to the outside society of the injustice and harsh miserable existence of
a prisoner. He recants through the eyes of prisoner and often through his poetry being slowly
emerged and consumed in body and soul. It is through his vivid imagery, mental anguish and

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deranged inner-thoughts which allows us into the minds of a deprived and confined individual
and their civil injustice.
Baca recites in his poem, Steal Door of Prison A set of bars/still as cobras in gray skins
wrapping around your heart little by little/ The ones you love cannot be touched/Your mind, your
heart, your spirit/slowly swallowing you (11-21). Bacas poem uses imagery and the use of a
cobra to illustrate the feeling of being hopeless and slowly submerged. Baca connects prison life
to being consumed entirely by heart and soul which sub-come to the prison walls. Baca uses
sympathy to illustrate the act of dying and the connection to dying for love. As desolate and grim
as his poetry seems at times, he often struggles with the righteous and the deranged life of an
immoral individual. He uses the metaphor of a malevolent snake which tighten coils slowly grip
and consume its prey. Baca uses this piece of imagery to reaffirm how slow and painful life
behind prison truly is. Consequently, he also implicates through his darkened poetry love and
compassion. The fact that you cannot be near your loved ones and the metaphoric reference of a
snakes coils tightening around your heart causing not only a slow death, but an act of being
subdued and broken. It would after all, just a matter of time which any individual would
eventually sub come. The question would remain did the individual perish, because of his own
free-will or because of a he died of a broken heart?
Bacas poetry is both metaphoric and yet disturbed. He writes in his Authors Note while
describing prison imagine living in a place where men are stripped down to their essential
cores, screams of torturous madnesshuman beings amongst the rapist, and the killers
beheading one-another (xv). The also states in his poem, Walking down to Town and back, Bits
of pieces of snake splattered on the wall, over her face./a violent wrenching of bodies battering
the wall (43). Again he uses the illustration of a snake and through his use of language portrays

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the connection with a snake and being stripped down by the government and housed in the
utmost horrific living conditions. His vivid use of language portrays a world in which he often
compares himself to being an injured and broken animal which is forced to be confined and live
broken and in-despair. Sadly, we are not housing an animal, we are in essence: sanctioning the
caging of human life. When did the caging of human being even the mentally ill and psychotic
become permissible? We as a society decided to cage all the wrong doers of the world and forget
about their existence. While it is true that we house them, feed them and even care for them, we
also subject them to an array of torment and unimaginable situations. The fact remains what are
the true implications and what happens when they are eventually set free?
Prisons are societys way of concealing what is damaged and broken and what is not
suitable to live amongst the norm. We house the petty criminals among the mentally insane, the
psychopaths among the innocent. We subject our prisoners to years of torment and mental
anguish while society lives peacefully and oblivious to the consequences of their ignorance. The
irony is that most of these prisoners will one day be released and free to live amongst us. It is the
inability for the government and society to take action which is most frightening. We continue to
choose to live in a society which condemns by stereo-typing and by race. We are too concerned
about only upholds the rights solely of the righteous of mankind and not of the abandoned and
in despair. More importantly, we must also be mindful of our racial profiling and the magnitude
of our actions and its repercussion.
Much like prison-life, society today can still be a source of racism and injustice. Many of
us still live in a world filled with rules, regulations and constant perceptions which only
disregard the fact that we are still choosing to cage a human life and even separating by race. As
Martin Luther King writes in, Letter from Birmingham Jail, Now is the time to lift our national

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policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to solid rock of human dignity (2). The constant
sacrifices of human dignity against the necessity to house the criminals of society should never
be one in the same. The government and society decided to house and confined all the criminals
of the world all in a 10x10 cell and simply forget of their existence. Prisons are segregated,
persecuted and housed in deplorable living conditions. Yet when they challenge and disobey
orders (against the indignity) and attempt to regain their rights as human beings they are instead
reprimanded for instating a riot or being non-compliant.
Human life should not be separated by race, nor should human dignity come at a cost.
Prison use should never use humiliation, deprivation and isolation as punishment. Indeed we
house our criminals and our government uses an array of senseless tactics to enforce the use of
power-over. We tell them when to eat, when to wake and even when we will allow them to see
the light of day, since when does our government own the sole use of the sun? We confine our
prisoners into deplorable living conditions and subject them to horrendous forms of torture and
self-indignity. We as society use prisons, not to rehabilitate, but to lock up and put away what we
do want to help. We live in world which the righteous members of society control the civil
injustice. But, who are we to assume life in prison is less valuable than the life outside. While it
is true that there are people in prison there are many deserve and must be held accountable for
their actions, we must remember to not allow prejudice and human degradation be our weapon.
Instead judging and assuming the actions based on financial status, race or gender, why
not look at entire persona as an individual. The cause and effect as well as the years of choices in
life could lead us to what is the reason for the crime in the first place. The deranged minds of the
hungry, angry and abandoned as well as the neglected could be some of the reasoning behind the
growing prison population. We as a society should concentrate more on the effects and the living

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conditions that our prisoners are being exposed to in body and soul and are subjected to everyday
and inhumane cruelty. They live in isolation, mental anguish and deplorable conditions. Baca
uses empathy to assist the public in the emotional connection to change and encompass an actual
human life. We house thousands of prisoners every year and we force them to live sometimes
an entire lifetime of emotional confinement and isolation.