Black Mesa PoemsBlack Mesa Poemsis rooted in the American Southwest, the setting of Jimmy Santiago Baca's highly acclaimed long narrative poem,Martin & Meditations on the South Valley(New Directions, 1987). "Baca's evocation of this landscape," as City Papernoted, "its aridity and fertility, is nothing short of brilliant." The individual poems ofBlack Mesaare embedded both in the family and in the community life of the barrio, detailing births and deaths, neighbors