Gary Soto
Gary Soto Poems
You're in this dream of cotton plants.
You raise a hoe, swing, and the first weeds
Fall with a sigh. You take another step,
Chop, and the sigh comes again,
...
I was hoping to be happy by seventeen.
School was a sharp check mark in the roll book,
An obnoxious tuba playing at noon because our team
Was going to win at night. The teachers were
...
All through lunch Peter pinched at his crotch,
And Jesús talked about his tattoos,
And I let the flies crawl my arm, undisturbed,
Thinking it was wrong, a buck sixty five,
...
The clouds shouldered a path up the mountains
East of Ocampo, and then descended,
Scraping their bellies gray on the cracked shingles of slate.
...
Monsignor, I believed Jesus followed me
With his eyes, and when I slept,
An angel peeled an orange
And waited for me to wake up.
...
Because there are avenues
Of traffic lights, a phone book
Of brothers and lawyers,
Why should you think your purse
...
Today it's going to cost us twenty dollars
To live. Five for a softball. Four for a book,
A handful of ones for coffee and two sweet rolls,
Bus fare, rosin for your mother's violin.
...
Wedding night
Graciela bled lightly
But enough to stain his thighs
And left an alphabet
Of teeth marks on his arm.
...
Listen, nephew.
When I opened the cantina
At noon
A triangle of sunlight
...
My chalk is no longer than a chip of fingernail,
Chip by which I must explain this Monday
Night the verbs "to get;" "to wear," "to cut."
I'm not given much, these tired students,
...
"It's a '49," Rhinehardt said, and slammed
The screen door, then worked his way around
The dog turds in the yard
To the Buick gutted from firethe gears
...
When the sun's whiteness closes around us
Like a noose,
It is noon, and Molina squats
In the uneven shade of an oleander.
...
Did you sneeze?
Yes, I rid myself of the imposter inside me.
Did you iron your shirt?
Yes, I used the steam of mother's hate.
...
We could wipe away a fly,
Drink, and order that yellow
Thing behind the glass, peach
Or sweet bread. Sunlight
...
There is the one who turns
A spoon over like a letter,
Reading the teeth-marks
Older than his own;
...
for César Chávez
Field
The wind sprays pale dirt into my mouth
The small, almost invisible scars
On my hands.
...
Gary Soto Biography
Gary Anthony Soto (born April 12, 1952) is an American author and poet. Soto was born to Mexican-American parents Manuel (1910–1957) and Angie Soto (1924-). In his youth, he worked in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley. Soto's father died in 1957, when he was five years old. As his family had to struggle to find work, he had little time or encouragement in his studies, hence, he was not a good student. Soto notes that in spite of his early academic record, while at high school he found an interest in poetry through writers such as Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Jules Verne, Robert Frost and Thornton Wilder. Soto attended Fresno City College and California State University, Fresno, where he earned his B.A. degree in English in 1974, studying with poet Philip Levine. He did graduate work in poetry writing at the University of California, Irvine, where he was the first Mexican-American to earn a M.F.A. in 1976. He states that he wanted to become a writer in college after discovering the novelist Gabriel García Márquez and the contemporary poets Edward Field, W. S. Merwin, Charles Simic, James Wright and Pablo Neruda, whom he calls "the master of them all. Soto taught at University of California, Berkeley and at University of California, Riverside, where he was a Distinguished Professor. Soto was a 'Young People's Ambassador' for the United Farm Workers of America, introducing young people to the organization's work and goals. Soto became the sponsor for the Pattonville High School Spanish National Honor Society in 2009. Soto lives in northern California, dividing his time between Berkeley and Fresno, but is no longer teaching.)
The Best Poem Of Gary Soto
A Red Palm
You're in this dream of cotton plants.
You raise a hoe, swing, and the first weeds
Fall with a sigh. You take another step,
Chop, and the sigh comes again,
Until you yourself are breathing that way
With each step, a sigh that will follow you into town.
That's hours later. The sun is a red blister
Coming up in your palm. Your back is strong,
Young, not yet the broken chair
In an abandoned school of dry spiders.
Dust settles on your forehead, dirt
Smiles under each fingernail.
You chop, step, and by the end of the first row,
You can buy one splendid fish for wife
And three sons. Another row, another fish,
Until you have enough and move on to milk,
Bread, meat. Ten hours and the cupboards creak.
You can rest in the back yard under a tree.
Your hands twitch on your lap,
Not unlike the fish on a pier or the bottom
Of a boat. You drink iced tea. The minutes jerk
Like flies.
It's dusk, now night,
And the lights in your home are on.
That costs money, yellow light
In the kitchen. That's thirty steps,
You say to your hands,
Now shaped into binoculars.
You could raise them to your eyes:
You were a fool in school, now look at you.
You're a giant among cotton plants.
Now you see your oldest boy, also running.
Papa, he says, it's time to come in.
You pull him into your lap
And ask, What's forty times nine?
He knows as well as you, and you smile.
The wind makes peace with the trees,
The stars strike themselves in the dark.
You get up and walk with the sigh of cotton plants.
You go to sleep with a red sun on your palm,
The sore light you see when you first stir in bed.
Gary Soto Comments
You're most likely the same person, or you are just as foolish to defend someone like him. I'll admit: I'm grammar challenged, but the rules of the English Language change so often that such a state differs from being illiterate. 'Your' was a typo. You are correct in pointing that out. 'Your kind infest the world and, like a parasite, feast on the living Word of others while producing nothing of your own' is correct because: 'feast on the living Word of others while producing nothing of your own' is not an independent clause; therefore, you should not put a comma before the 'and'. I capitalized 'Word' because it is the living Word and the capitalization signifies a greater meaning. Read some of Emily Dickinson's poetry and you'll understand what I was trying to imply. You think your remarks are witty, but it is you, sir, who is illiterate. Again, I apologize for the misuse of the comment box. This shall be the last instance that this takes place. Humbly yours- Orran Ainmire
You never have written one poem that has come close to this mans accomplishments and if he is illiterate then he wouldent be listed.
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12/22/2024 1:42:35 PM # 1.0.0
I love you, Whitt Bell. Gary Soto is horrible because he writes meaningless crap that doesn't mean anything. 'it shows that your an illiterate twit' Should be 'you're' 'Your kind infest the world and, like' Should be 'Your kind infest the world, and, like' 'feast on the living Word of others' Should be 'feast on the living word of others' Who's illiterate?
This shows how dumb you are that you can´t understand gary soto's poems