This paper discusses the poet, Gary Soto. In spite of Soto's individualism, he is very much a contemporary American poet. Like many of his peers, he writes liberally in an autobiographical or confessional manner. As an intensively thoughtful poet, he seeks to maintain his connection to his Mexican customs and traditions as it exists on both sides of the border. His work often focuses on the demise of his father at a tender age, on his difficulties in romantic affairs and the urgency of emotional closeness with his family. On a broader level, Soto speaks vehemently on behalf of endurance and mutual respect, while he denounces middle- and upper class comfort and indifference to the poor. As a Chicano working-class poet, Soto sometimes uses representative language that might be unusual to and difficult for some of us. As a poet with a strong sense of association with people who are poor, abandoned, and oppressed, Soto tries to create poetry out of customary working-class experience and images. All this is very different from typically bourgeois American poetry.
