My Pen Name
In the introduction to my book, Heart River Undertow, Jimmy Santiago Baca refers to me as Hubito, which was my initial pen name when I began writing. The name was a Southwest version of my childhood nickname "Little Hub". I chose it to represent humility, and a spirit of adventure for what has become my life's passion.
He
Was
Born in
Kain tuc ki,
An Indian word
Meaning "The
Bloody Land".
It is his
Mother's
Heritage
From her
Grand-
Mother,
Who was
Blackfoot Indian,
to which Hubito
Attributes his feelings
And life perceptions.
My poems are my real resume. I write not to be right or wrong, but to accept life with insight, to understand, and be compassionate, and not judge others. I am a native of Kentucky, former social worker in Boys' Clubs of America, former business man, and now a full time poet living in Washington, DC. I completed a BA in both Psychology and Sociology at Western Kentucky University, and have extensive Creative Writing credits from Phoenix College, and Arizona State University.
On The Road With Hubito
By Jimmy Santiago Baca
I am writing from a Holiday Inn Express room in Boise, Idaho, sitting at a desk next to a window as I look out to admire the snow, and think about the good times I've had with Hubito. That's what friends of Herb Lowrey call him.
I met him about five years ago in Tucson. He told about my reading the Porte Bien poem in Healing Earthquakes, how it shook him to his marrow. Whether it was a good or bad poem, it prompted him to attend another reading in Tucson where he introduced himself as an aspiring poet. He bought several books, shook my hand, and thanked me. I felt I was shaking hands with Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken. He was different from the image I had a few years earlier when I received an email from cruisinpoet, asking for a recommendation letter that might help him get into a creative writing graduate program. I thought he was some Chicano kid. I did not put his face to the email tag until some months later, when I received an emailed from him about making a donation for books to Cedar Tree, Inc., a non-profit literacy group.
A few months later, he alerted me that he would be passing through Albuquerque, and would like to learn more about my work in teaching literacy in the prisons, and to at-risk youth. I meet thousands of people monthly in my literary travels, but usually dismiss most encounters because of their brevity. Even though we had hardly exchange a word much less spent time with each other, I agreed to meet him. Here, our friendship begins in a memorable fashion.
We met for breakfast at the Frontier Restaurant in Albuquerque and got along quite well. Later, we went up to Ute country in southeastern Utah to give a writing workshop. On that drive he told me he had Blackfoot Indian blood from his grandmother's side of the family. I teased him, saying, "I'd watch yourself if I was you."
"Why," he asked puzzled.
"Because you look like the spitting image of General Custer, and I don't think these brothers will appreciate you very much."
Hubito gave a spectacular poetry reading in the auditorium that day, and continued his superb renditions in a few days later in Ogden, Utah, where we spent a week conducting a writing workshop for at-risk high school kids. We went our separate ways, and met a few months later to give a reading at Georgetown University in DC. Then, we flew to Phoenix, rented a car and drove down to Tucson, the second of many momentous moments to come.
During the drive down, Hubito read his poems to me, and for the first time, even though I had heard many of them before, they struck me with deeper meanings than I had experienced. I exhorted him to keep writing, and working on his poems, they were good.
We stayed in Tucson at Walter and Linda's house, friends of Hubito, hiked in the Tucson Mountain foothills among the saguaros where he broke his life down-- born in Kentucky, worked twelve years with Boys'Clubs of America with 42,000 boys, had an older brother in a circus who performed in Cuba the very night Castro marched into Havana, how he made millions in real estate, then lost it by trusting a business associate, then restarted from ground-zero living in a storage room while regaining his wealth, bought a decaying antique yacht for a poem and some cash, became a dedicated seafaring captain, and after it was all said and done, threw himself headlong into poetry. Then he met and married the African jewel Janet, and as I write this, he awaits me in Managua, Nicaragua, where we will read poetry, and listen to the greatest poets from around the world participating in the Festival Poesia de Granada. There's so much more to the man than this fleeting glimpse of his life, but for more you need to look at his poetry in Heart River Undertow.
The first part evolves around family, alienation, regret, dreams, brother and father, and his grandparents who he dearly loved. His Dad's death dream is opaque, asking for more, and hinting at even greater volumes of what went unsaid. It's all about unfinished business. His dad poems are underscored with immense emotion of regret, remorse and guilt. He tries to comfort dad but there's always trouble brewing beyond the focus, a mysterious yearning underlies the tone. He laments his brother also, sad from not having a relationship with him and yet the great love he had for his grandparents seems to lessen his agony.
As we move into part two, we realize apartheid is well fed, and alive in America, especially Kentucky. These are good poems that tell about his childhood, growing up in a racist society, what he did to question it, and its effect on him. Something's wrong, and an uneasy feeling makes him curious about Black/White relationships. Integration is even worse. It's on the law books but not in people's hearts.
He eyes with shrewd compassion homeless people, Native Americans, indigenous people, and in doing so renders true history for us, the America story, tragic and heroic. His awareness blooms as he becomes conscious of border life with refreshing poems, if not uplifting, written in a way that gives his southwest experience a unique and grounded perspective. There's empathy for the Mexican worker, examples of exploitation, and characters of misfortune, rich and poor, tied together in an ever-tightening knot. We realize his experience has taught him life is too deep and wide to assault his soul with the mark of oppressors. The white man of power, the white man of money, he defies that description, and creates his own definition.
In part three, it's all about growing up, learning about the world on your own, painful and glorious as it is. What's the point he asks, and then he goes on to sharpen the point to deliver it. He maps out urban madness, life transitions, and appreciates it all, even injustice, you are what you eat to fit in, to settle in, be accepted, that is, until mortality slaps you in the face.
Part four is a series of love poems, playful love, concrete love, food love, with part five ending in bizarre, erotic, chaotic, frenzied love, searching for both order and destruction, as it has always been, will be, and should be. Hubito's poetry is a new unique voice that weaves a tight tapestry of life. His Tree House Story Telling poem ends the book by taking life full cycle to the self realization of our connection to a creative universe.