Themes In Spliced Wire

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“Spliced Wire” By Jimmy Santiago Baca Jimmy Santiago Baca was abandoned by his parents and grew up on the streets of Santa Fe. New Mexico. Baca taught himself to read and write, while in prison for drug possession he began composing poetry. Baca conducts poetry workshops in a variety of settings from university to the prison. In his poem “Spliced Wire” Baca shows the connection and disconnection of a relationship between a husband and a wife using the metaphor of electrical current. In the first and second stanza of the poem the writer compares a healthy relationship between a man and women to a house filled with light warm in all corners. “My words I gave you like soft warm toast in early morning/I brewed your tongue to rich dark coffee, and drank my fill” (Baca, 1982, lines 4, 5). The writer alludes to a husband and wife communicating and having breakfast together where they sit and share their thoughts. Their love illuminates their home like a bright light bulb. The husband is devoted to the wife and does whatever it takes to make her happy. The wife stays home and the husband has made the outside world available to her through the telephone and television. The wife adores her…show more content…
The wife is distracted by the television and telephone communication between the two begins to weaken. “A prisoner in a concentration camp” (Baca, 1982 line 17). The concentration camp is a symbol that the wife feels like a trapped prisoner in the marriage and she feels she cannot get out. The current in the relationship is strong as far as the husband in concerned. However, the wife begins to break away causing the lights to flicker. Perhaps the writer was foretelling this “eagles, ravens, owls on rims of red canyon” (Baca, 1982, line 10) these birds are scavengers that pick at their food and can eat
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