SOURCE: “Entropy in the Poetry of Gary Soto: The Dialectics of Violence,” in Revista de Temas Hispánicos, Vol. 5, No. 1, Autumn, 1987, pp. 111-20.

In the following essay, de la Fuentes examines Soto's focus on entropy and deterioration in his poetry.

In discussing the relationship between entropy and art, Rudolf Arnheim (1971) points out that “when the Second Law of Thermodynamics began to enter the public consciousness a century or so ago, it suggested an apocalyptic vision of the course of events on earth” by stating “that the entropy of the world strives towards a maximum, which amounted to saying that the energy of the universe, although constant in amount, was subject to more and more dissipation and degradation” (p. 9). Arnheim qualifies this definition, however, by adding that “the popular use of the notion of entropy has changed. If during the last century it served to diagnose, explain, and deplore...