I Am Offering This Poem

Jimmy Santiago Baca's poem "I Am Offering This Poem" demonstrates the truly difficult life he had.  The poem is full of similes and metaphors, most of which are related to staying warm when you have nothing else. 

In the first stanza, Baca is saying how he has nothing to give the one he loves except his words, his poem.  He uses a metaphor to compare his poem to a warm coat or thick socks.  I think he is trying to get across the point that love can make you feel warm.

  The third stanza, again, reiterates the fact the he has nothing else to give his love except the poems he writes.  Baca's metaphors and similes in this stanza are also related to warm things, this time just corn and a scarf.   I think the constant relations to warmth are from the coldness of the world that Baca suffered at such a young age.  From being abandoned, to being an orphan, to living on the streets, Baca probably always felt unloved or unwanted.  Not to mention the isolation he suffered in jail for three years, and the scars left on his soul from being on death row for a time.  I feel like Baca was never given love from the world (from anyone, really), and describes that in his poem.   He describes his love as warmth because he never had either of those (love or warmth). 

If you want to take the poem literally, maybe Baca’s homelessness caused him to understand the need for warmth just as one needs love.  I think that the words literally express Baca’s experiences of being on his own.  For example, he mention uses the metaphor “a pot full of yellow corn to warm your belly in the winter,” which was probably an experience he had as a man living on the streets (maybe in a soup kitchen or something?). 

I don't really understand the fifth stanza.  It seems as if Baca is trying to say that he'll help others in need because he knows what it is like to not be helped.  Or maybe he is referring to the way he got his big break in poetry: the woman that helped him publish his first book. The seventh stanza uses his repetition (anaphora?) again: "I have nothing else to give".  In this stanza, he is saying that if you at least know that one person loves you, you’ll have all the strength you need to feel good about yourself in your heart no matter how other people feel about you. 

In all, I see this poem as a way of Baca to offer others (or his love) everything that no one gave him.  He wants to give warmth and love and safety so that others don't have to go through his pain I believe that Baca’s attitude toward poetry is very grateful.  It helped him get out of a slump that was his life. He probably looks towards poetry as his way to escape from the harsh world and experience a world that has love. .  That's just my interpretation, though, after reading his life story.