Poetry

Montoya fused English and Spanish languages into his prose and poetry. His encounters growing up with Mexican farmworkers and Navy servicemen informed not only his bilingual wordplay but also his worldview as he became more and more exposed to the lack of opportunity, political discrimination, and poverty that Chicana/o’s and minority groups throughout the U.S faced.

Beat Poet Influence: The Beat Poets of the 1940’s and 1950’s were known for the performative approach to their poetry. It’s a characteristic that Montoya employed as well. According to Montoya, the poet Walt Whitman, showed him that “you did not have to rhyme and [use] meter, and I really, really liked him”. Montoya’s knowledge of corridos, also known as “story songs,” complemented his approach to storytelling. Corridos, while they focus on the trials and tribulations of the protagonist, often also respond to larger socio political changes, and the disenfranchisement of Mexican Americans. In Montoya’s case, the issues and realizations at hand were social alienation, postwar disengagement, and cultural unease within the Chicana/o community. Montoya’s engagement with Eurocentric American literature established a connection between the Beat and Chicano art movements. Both movements were looking beyond a “master narrative dominated by Anglo American males”.

Popular reception: Montoya’s bilingual nature within his poetry was often discouraged by his instructors. He had a hard time understanding why they didn’t see his code switching and word play as a legitimate way of expressing himself.

The 1960s and 70s saw Chicana/o artists writing, reciting, and publishing long bilingual and trilingual poems. “El Sol y Los de Abajo”, “Yo Soy Joaquin” and “Pensamiento Serpentino”, to name a few, utilized Spanish, English, Caló, and other various indigenous languages to captivate colonialism and miscegenation that shape the Chicana/o identity. Though there was an explosion of creativity within the Chicano arts during this time, much of academia and its associated institutions saw Chicana/o poetry as trivial, low brow, and was often denied by mainstream publishers. In response to this, Chicana/o publishing houses emerged in response in the 1960’s and 70’s, creating outlets for Chicana/o art, voices, and poetry.