The great whirl of exile

For those who know his history, it is no surprise that Leroy V. Quintana is a great story-teller in his poetry. He was raised in Albuquerque by Mexican grandparents, who told him numerous folk-tales (Cuentos) as a child. His work is endowed not only with a raucous frontier humor, but also a remarkable emotional range, from comic depictions of adolescent love to moving poems of death and loss, to reflections on his war experience in Vietnam.