Post by dadough38 on May 21, 2012 14:55:55 GMT -5
Born in 1952 and raised in Fresno, California, Gary Soto grew up in a poor household where poetry was the last thing on his mind. He was raised in a single-parent household, with his father having passed away when he was young. He spent much of his youth working the fields in San Joaquin, and helping his family subsist. He spent the first eighteen years of his life barely scraping by, nearly failing out of high school, and stirring up trouble for his teachers and peers.
After those beginnings, far from any exposure to poetry, the self-proclaimed “teenage werewolf” went to California State University to study geology. In a stroke of chance, he found his first experience with poetry in the college library, and many other experiences followed. He took strongly to literature and poetry as a hobby, and enrolled in his first class in writing at the age of twenty.
From then on, Soto began writing his own poetry, and has thirteen books of his own poetry currently published. He has been honored with the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum, been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and received the Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature, to name a few of his many accomplishments.
Soto is a poet for the people, mixing simple language and appeal to the everyman with more complex themes and concepts that draw from his life and family. His free verse style and constraint only to the voice of each narrator makes each work feel separate and uniquely his simultaneously. Soto is a poet for daily life, and his work is, “about the feelings and experiences of most American kids,” as he himself commented. His works paint a picture of a place and an era in Hispanic-American history, and each of his poems is geared towards teaching about the time and place of his choosing. Soto wrote of men who “enter the fields to hoe, Row after row, among the small flags of onion,” and boys who “did [their] werewolf thing- beating each other on the lawn.” His diversity of topics and original ideas about his world make each and every poem he wrote interesting and fresh.
Soto’s later career reflects his political views much more frequently than his earlier works, and some of his poems take a turn towards the real concerns for the average American and their family. Soto has written about living from paycheck to paycheck, his own “Economics”, and a simple explanation of “How Things Work”. Soto, always holding the flag for the working class, has written many a sharp-tongued criticism of the “Mr. Blazer” and “Ms. Perfume” in all of us. He, like many of the other great American poets, eventually came to the conclusion that, “A tip, a small purchase here and there/ And things just keep going. I guess.”
Regardless of the specific poem or when it was written, Gary Soto’s poems are always funny, interesting, and, above all else, relatable. As a major American poet in this era, Soto is a truly inspirational figure. His works have been making readers think about themselves and the world around them for decades, and he will certainly make that happen tonight.
Please join me in welcoming the fantastic contemporary poet, Mr. Gary Soto.
544 Words
After those beginnings, far from any exposure to poetry, the self-proclaimed “teenage werewolf” went to California State University to study geology. In a stroke of chance, he found his first experience with poetry in the college library, and many other experiences followed. He took strongly to literature and poetry as a hobby, and enrolled in his first class in writing at the age of twenty.
From then on, Soto began writing his own poetry, and has thirteen books of his own poetry currently published. He has been honored with the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum, been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and received the Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature, to name a few of his many accomplishments.
Soto is a poet for the people, mixing simple language and appeal to the everyman with more complex themes and concepts that draw from his life and family. His free verse style and constraint only to the voice of each narrator makes each work feel separate and uniquely his simultaneously. Soto is a poet for daily life, and his work is, “about the feelings and experiences of most American kids,” as he himself commented. His works paint a picture of a place and an era in Hispanic-American history, and each of his poems is geared towards teaching about the time and place of his choosing. Soto wrote of men who “enter the fields to hoe, Row after row, among the small flags of onion,” and boys who “did [their] werewolf thing- beating each other on the lawn.” His diversity of topics and original ideas about his world make each and every poem he wrote interesting and fresh.
Soto’s later career reflects his political views much more frequently than his earlier works, and some of his poems take a turn towards the real concerns for the average American and their family. Soto has written about living from paycheck to paycheck, his own “Economics”, and a simple explanation of “How Things Work”. Soto, always holding the flag for the working class, has written many a sharp-tongued criticism of the “Mr. Blazer” and “Ms. Perfume” in all of us. He, like many of the other great American poets, eventually came to the conclusion that, “A tip, a small purchase here and there/ And things just keep going. I guess.”
Regardless of the specific poem or when it was written, Gary Soto’s poems are always funny, interesting, and, above all else, relatable. As a major American poet in this era, Soto is a truly inspirational figure. His works have been making readers think about themselves and the world around them for decades, and he will certainly make that happen tonight.
Please join me in welcoming the fantastic contemporary poet, Mr. Gary Soto.
544 Words