"Born and raised in Compton, California, Richard Vargas is seeped in the culture of his youth-the fresh beans and tender tortillas, the addict father and close families and cool lowrider. He suffered and delighted in the expectations of his gender, including the sense that a willing woman or couple of beers could sweep the blues away. He served in the military, graduated from an MFA program too late in life to reap its employment benefits, acquired a profound political sensibility, and kept on going back to the world for more," writes Margaret Randall in her introduction to How a Civilization Begins. In his characteristically candid American vernacular, Richard delivers once again a poetry collection that explores the intersection between the personal and the political, and the grief of losing a father to addiction and its lifelong consequences. Vulnerable and raw at once, Richard does not sugar-coat the realities of living in a time of contradictions and political divisions.