Throughout the three texts, A Fire in My Hands, Neighborhood Odes, and Where Sparrows Work Hard, Gary Soto uses small and normally insignificant items as the focus of many poems in these texts, celebrating them with odes and sharing the stories behind them in narrative poems. He does this in order to show one of his primary audiences, children, that everything and every person in the world has a story that deserves to be heard. He is teaching them that everything and everyone has a purpose, a story, and importance in the world. Similarly, Soto is also teaching his readers that everything can be a subject for good poetry. He proves that poetry does not have to always be about abstract or confusing ideas. By taking everyday objects that most people can relate to, Soto shows that poetry can be a celebration and a storytelling of even the smallest and most insignificant things.
[...] Soto starts the poem talking about the generic features of the library-the “Quiet Please!” signs, the water fountain, the librarian with “glasses hanging from her neck”. But then he goes on to talk about how he wishes he could have flown his abuelitos or grandparents out to his home, to show them his library. He begins to talk about the marks that he has made on the library that would make it his territory-the mural he helped paint, the books he read for a read-a-thon, and the globe that he dropped. [...]
[...] Poems such as Widow Perez”, “Joey the Midget”, Outpatients Selling Bibles in Goshen City” and “That Girl” are all poems about specific people who have unique stories of their own. For example, from Where Sparrows Work Hard is a long poem of nine sections which each tell a different story about Chuy's quirky and almost freakish behavior. For example, Chuy “would sit spoon in hand, striking the ants that unraveled from spools of dark holes”. He would “laugh when they were a stain spreading Chuy also fell for a girl on a can of peas, collected stolen hubcaps, discovered that light bends and write in his journal “Light is only so strong”. [...]
[...] For example, in the poems “Black and “Pepper all of these objects are everyday objects that seems to be just that-everyday objects. However, Soto uses narrative and description to give these items a story. They are all objects from his childhood, but they are unique in that they are the ones that were a part of a larger picture and a larger story. “Oranges” from the book A Fire in My Hands is a poem about Soto when he walked with a girl for the first time in his life. [...]
[...] Melendez also comments on Soto's work, saying that the images are “moving and sensitive” and that is at his best in the reminiscence of childhood (Melendez, 78). Although Soto uses single subject titles in most of his poetry, often times, the narrative poems only briefly mention the subject of the title. This is because Soto wants to concentrate more on the actual stories than the object. For example, in the text, “Neighborhood there are two odes in particular that spark distinct memories for the poet from his childhood. to La Tortilla” is a poem about eating tortillas or “flutes when rolled. [...]
[...] In the same way, to the Sprinkler” is reminiscent of a time when running through the sprinklers was the best fun that Soto had as a child. He mentions that there was no swimming pool, but that the sprinklers could be just as much fun. He also uses the sprinklers to move into another memory about a time when he was stung in the foot by a bee. He talks again about his mother coming out to help him with medicine and hugs, and the lesson that he learned from her-“And as for those bees, You have to watch for them. [...]
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