The Man

Most of my generation vaguely remembers Gary Soto as a short fiction writer who we had to read in late grade school or junior high. He was that one guy who sometimes used spanish words, forcing the kids who cared to delve into their emerging second language skills just to complete a sentence, even when the word we struggled minutes over was something as simple as amigo or abuela or adios (the one word we felt proud to know automatically as if we were Mexican ourselves). Who knew, however, that Gary Soto is actually The Man.
I'm currently reading New & Selected Poems by Gary Soto as part of my honors project. It's a thick book for poetry with an artistically flat cover - one I wouldn't be mesmerized by, in fact, probably not one I would even pick up off the shelf. And that's why I shouldn't look at covers. But the inside... the inside makes The Man. The Man owns words and makes words new. I have already stolen the preface title: Sizing Up the Sparrows. Soon, perhaps, I will be brilliant and write something as beautiful and no longer be a theif. But those skies look rather rusty.
The book is a dense 177 pages with poems divided into 7 chronological sections. So far my favorite section is "Black Hair" but here are some of my favorite poems, just in case you want something to Google:
"The Tale of Sunlight"
"The First"
"Her"
"The Widow Perez"
"Morning on This Street"
"The Trees That Change Our Lives"
"Heaven"
"Small Town with One Road"

And here's a little taste of Soto:

"I say it is enough/To be where the smells/Of creatures/Braid like rope/And to know if/The grasses rustle/It is only/A lizard passing."
from "The Space"

And this is why Soto is The Man and the first poet in my project.

I hope you are intrigued, just as I am.

Basalil