SOURCE: “The Streets of Gary Soto,” in Latin American Literary Review, Vol. XVIII, No. 35, January-June, 1990, pp. 32-49.

In the following essay, Olivares provides a thematic and stylistic analysis of Soto's poetry.

In the poem “Chuy” from Gary Soto's Where Sparrows Work Hard (35), the speaker describes his protagonist in a cafe:

Chuy noted On a napkin —a street is only so long— And stared outside Where already the day Had a dog drop Limp as a dishtowel And the old staggering On a crutch Of fierce heat. “There is meaning In that bus, those kids,” He thought, And turned the dime In his coat pocket. 

Here Chuy attempts to conceive the street solely as geographic space, a conception which he affirms by writing it down. Yet this belief is false, as apt to dissolve as the tissue he writes it on. Although he may add to the dime he...