Fair Trade. One of my favorite poems, gave it to the students many times--or simply read it to them in class. Insightful, touching, accurate and subtly furious. A picture of a world, Gary Soto's own world, growing up--in Fresno, here described soon after the time of his marriage. So that the tenderness of a new life--the possibility--becomes all the more stark set against the realities that figure in the poem...(pain, love, casual indifference, anger, pride...)
Actually, furious is too strong a word (although I'm sure there were moments of fury. Bitterness as well). Gary Soto is too good a writer for that. And he loves the world too much--or better said, he loves being able to share the world--to tell its story--it's amazingly generous on his part, the way he digs into a past, salvaging gems and wreckage at one go. Facing it all.
His poems are true--and this is what I wanted to carry...
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