Soto, Gary 2005
I was hoping to be happy by seventeen.
School was a sharp check mark in the roll book,
An obnoxious tube playing at noon…
– Gary Soto, “Saturday at the Canal”
Broadside of Gary Soto’s poem, “Saturday at the Canal.”
Listen to Gary Soto’s 2005 reading for the Poetry Center of Chicago:
Vintage poster of Gary Soto’s reading for the Poetry Center of Chicago.
First I forgot your voice, then the photo you gave me.
When a leaf fell I no longer
Thought of you, shy and wordless, in a raked yard.
I no longer saw you as
The dark girl among trees,
At the entrance to a story for which
The end was always marriage and a bright car.
Your voice never came back; at night
I was left to my nonsense and a typewriter
That couldn’t get things right.
– Gary Soto, “Her”
Watch Gary Soto read some of his work:
