Gary SotoGary Soto (1952-) was born in Fresno, California. He began to publish in 1977 as one of the Chicano voices articulating the protest literature associated with César Estrada Chávez, co-founder of the labor movement which became the United Farm Workers. Soto’s poems express a journey from life in the ghettos of Fresno to back-breaking harvesting in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley, and to Taxco, Mexico, in search of his roots. In the poem below, Ocampo is a Mexican town abandoned by its residents due to the desolation of persistent drought conditions:
The Drought
The clouds shouldered a path up the mountains
East of Ocampo, and then descended,
Scraping their bellies gray on the cracked shingles of slate.
They entered the valley, and passed the roads that went
Trackless, the houses blown open, their cellars creaking
And lined with the bottles that held their breath for years.
They passed the fields where the trees dried thin as hat racks
And the plow’s tooth bit the earth for what endured.
But what continued were the wind that plucked the birds spineless
And the young who left with a few seeds in each pocket,
Their belts tightened on the fifth notch of hunger—
Under the sky that deafened from listening for rain.
Further Reading:
Gary Soto writes for all ages, in both poetry and fiction forms. For poetry readers, try New and Selected Poems or youth-centric titles Party Cloudy: Poems of Love and Longing and A Fire in My Hands: Poems. For a quick list of other titles authored or influenced by Gary Soto, click here.
Next Week: Margaret Atwood
Content developed by local resident and poet Leland Jamieson
