SOURCE: “A Conversation with Leroy V. Quintana,” in Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilingue, Vol. 12, No. 3, September, 1985, pp. 218-229.

In the following interview, Benson talks with Quintana about how his home village and his experiences during the Vietnam War shaped his poetry.

Leroy V. Quintana was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico on June 10, 1944. He never knew his father; during his early years he lived with his grandparents in Ratón, in the northern part of the state. Their tales of family members, village people, witches, buried tesoro, and la Llorona directly inform the poems in his first two books: Hijo del Pueblo (1976) and Sangre (1981). The structures and style of this tradition, with its emphasis on human reactions to everyday and supernatural events, provide the basis for the narrative form of these books as well. In the third grade he went to live with his mother and stepfather, spending summers...