sometimes a mandarin orange, sometimes a grapefruit

POVs: Schneider on Gary Soto

2007-03-04T12:49:00.002+08:00

The acidic Schneider (see Cosmoetica for more) doesn't think very highly of Soto...I don't necessarily agree with him but he is pretty funny if annoyingly erm egocentric??!Well anyway, here's what he wrote (on Soto's "How Things Work"):

This is 1 of those damnable poems that I really cannot do alot with, because it is so dull that to invigorate it would require me Schneiderizing the poem too much. Alack, all I can do is stem the boredom with concision:
How Things Work

The tip I left for the waitress filters down
Like a belligerent cat that won't let go
Of a balled sock. As far as I can tell it works like this:
You buy bread from a grocery, a bag of apples
From a fruit stand, and what coins
Are passed on helps others buy pencils, glue,
Tickets to a movie in which laughter
Is thrown into their faces.

A small purchase here and there,
And things just keep going. I guess.

At least I axed the 'roots of a child' trope. The smaller version also flows a bit more, & starts in right away with the motion of things. It's a passable workshop poem now. No, there's not a grand revelation- but, hey- IT'S GARY "FUCKIN'" SOTO! Enough!

Life Cycles

2007-02-28T00:01:00.000+08:00

What you give to me is soluble,
a missed heartbeat disappearing into blood,
a recognisable quiet, blank speech bubbles
above a sea of strangers. We cross
paths, railroads, wavering map contours
that encircle joints, street corners where
we meet and become a little more
like each other.

If I have managed to love you,
somewhere in the dermatology of a landscape
there has been a blush, a tingling ringing
disguised as birdcall. If in harmless studies
of passing-by, we have inflicted loneliness
on each other, there has been a closed sunset,
a minute shutting-down of the soul,
disguised as night.

What I give to you is soluble,
a promise melting down a phone line,
a suggestion of fidelity, red roses awaiting arrest
in the web of a flower-shop. We dislocate
faces, landmarks, the jumbled
melodies of untraceable laughter.
We form collages that go on and on--- a piece
of gum on a politician's sole, an umbrella blocking out
a scene of danger, an ironic twist--- never
making sense, never pretending not to.

my attempt to work on something like Soto's poem in my previous post (see below). How effective am I? I think I need a bit more focus---the last stanza kinds of wanders away in search of (oh gacckss) a dues ex machina!!!

Poet Spotlight: Gary Soto

2007-02-25T16:42:00.000+08:00

How Things Work (1985)

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.
We're completing our task. The tip I left
For the waitress filters down
Like rain, wetting the new roots of a child
Perhaps, a belligerent cat that won't let go
Of a balled sock until there's chicken to eat.
As far as I can tell, daughter, it works like this:
You buy bread from a grocery, a bag of apples
From a fruit stand, and what coins
Are passed on helps others buy pencils, glue,
Tickets to a movie in which laughter
Is thrown into their faces.
If we buy goldfish, someone tries on a hat.
If we buy crayons, someone walks home with a broom.
A tip. a small purchase here and there,
And things just keep going. I guess.

Wikipedia says:
Gary Soto (born 1952) is an American author and poet. He has received many awards for his writing, which is centered on the Mexican-American experience.
see also: official website

I really liked the piece above, its intricacies, the way the seemingly random and irrelevant things fit together to make sense. The title "How Things Work" has a rather scientific ring to it (not helped by the fact that I used to be addicteed to a educational science PC game with a similar name as a child!!!) and this for me imparts to the poet's portrayal of the little money flows around a community a terrible, machinelike quality. I would like to think that the money flows in the poem are more than just trivial penny-splitting. They seem to me to be metaphors for the interconnections between person and person (perhaps complete strangers) within a community. The 'dominoes' effect of one's trivial spendings spreads out like a rings around the epicentre of an earthquake diagram---but without the drama of an earthquake. The idea of a tip to the waitress '(filtering)' down makes the impact of one action on another seem subtle and consistent, if slow and unoticeable. It also gives the impression of nourishment, suggesting by extension that we are all interdependent within a community and that the way we live---the necessities we buy, small generosities towards ourselves and our loved ones--- may actually sustain or enhance the lives of others and vice versa.

The Return

2007-02-25T02:16:00.000+08:00

It is not difficult
to remember time’s blindness
--- as much as the night could see.
Their love was such that midnight's light
no longer seeped in between their palms, their eyes.
The fronds, ghostly in the canopy, shuddered
at their fruit, the bud of the bud
which would turn an erstwhile lover
into an accomplice.

Tonight, they sang
a sand-in-seashell song.
I am the mother, the child,
the midwife of the homecoming trail
--- in another poem we may return,
like footsteps to the dawning shore.

This marks my so-called return to fp after a rather long hiatus. In a semi-perverse move I've abandoned my old pen-name and account to test out the waters all over again. After all, reincarnation is free and easy in the virtual world :) Originally part of another poem which went belly-up (these things do happen...), I recently modified it to more or less fit my mood at this juncture. I like to think that this is a piece for those who knew me and also for who thought they knew me. It could also be a piece for all who have been prodigious-and-then-regretful....