A Fire in My Hands by Gary Soto
"A Fire in My Hands" by Gary Soto is a collection of free-verse poems that captures the essence of youthful experiences through vivid imagery and storytelling. The author, reflecting on his journey into poetry, emphasizes the importance of drawing inspiration from personal experiences, making this work relatable to young readers. Each poem is paired with a brief anecdote, providing context and grounding the lyrical content in everyday life while showcasing Soto's unique voice.
The collection features twelve poems enhanced by ink drawings that complement the themes explored, conveying a bittersweet yet luminous quality. Soto's candid and empathetic narrative captures the complexities of growing up, addressing both challenges and joys without resorting to moralistic tales. His Mexican American background enriches the work, offering a perspective that resonates with many while speaking to universal human experiences. Through this collection, Soto invites readers to see the beauty in ordinary moments, making poetry accessible and relevant to a diverse audience.
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Subject Terms
A Fire in My Hands by Gary Soto
First published: 1990; illustrated
Subjects: Coming-of-age, emotions, family, friendship, and race and ethnicity
Type of work: Poetry
Recommended Ages: 13-18
Form and Content
This collection of free-verse lyrics is spoken by the author. In a brief preface, Gary Soto discusses his unexpected passage into the world of poetry and reminds young people to trust their own experiences to be ripe for poetic exploration. A Fire in My Hands concludes with four pages of questions and answers concerning Soto’s creative strategies. Throughout the body of the work, each poem is preceded by a two-or three-sentence anecdote characterizing the experience or event that generated the poem, certifying that the lyric voice here is Soto’s own. Twelve poems are complemented by ink drawings that capture some salient part of the topic under investigation.
Free verse suits the casual and straightforward tone of these poems. The voice is, by and large, that of a storyteller conveying bittersweet vignettes through lively imagery. Descriptions are vivid and, regardless of the pain that haunts some of the experiences recounted, have a luminous quality, which is especially manifest in the climactic images of the poems. The tiny narratives that house these lyrics are ultimately vehicles for quiet and enlightening revelations. Soto manages to create this tone without turning the poems into fables or lectures and without letting the narrative become overwhelmed by lyric utterances. These revelations emerged via lucidly portrayed objects, acts, or thoughts. His candid voice also makes narrative details stand out at once realistically and ironically. For example, in “Pepper Tree,” a poem about nurturing growth in a hard setting, a store’s name, Lucky Day, is both banally realistic and spiritually pointed. Such subtlety constantly informs the natural speech of this believable and empathic adult as he talks to young people.
Critical Context
Nothing special contextualizes this skillful verse; in form, nothing is experimental. Yet, what is attempted in A Fire in My Hands is mastered. Gary Soto’s strategy of attaching anecdotes to the poems is a good one, both because it suggests to the reader how ordinary experiences, not extraordinary adventures, give rise to poetry and because it impresses the reality of Soto himself into the poems, which are narrative in form but not confessional. The speaker may interest readers in the United States because he is Mexican American and has life experiences common to a large minority group. It is more significant, however, that readers hear an exquisitely humane voice speaking for and about all people. His is a very American voice, a voice made universal by its command of native idiom. Soto has neither sugar-coated the facts of youthful life in the United States nor betrayed its positive features with a predictably ugly realism. Life in these poems is whole. Readers will not find them significantly different from the rest of Soto’s poetry even though they touch so much upon youth. His is always a down-to-earth way of speaking, of exploring ordinary ground with an eye, and an ear, for rarity.
Bibliography
Blasingame, James. “Interview with Gary Soto.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 47 (November, 2003): 266-267.
Bruce-Novoa, Juan. “Patricide and Resurrection: Gary Soto.” In Chicano Poetry: A Response to Chaos. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982.
Candelaria, Cordelia. Chicano Poetry. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986.
Cooley, Peter. “I Can Hear You Now.” Parnassus 8, no. 1 (1979): 297-311.
De la Fuentes, Patricia. “Mutability and Stasis: Images of Time in Gary Soto’s Black Hair.” American Review 16 (1988): 188-197.
Murphy, Patricia. “Inventing Lunacy: An Interview with Gary Soto.” Hayden’s Ferry Review 18 (Spring/Summer, 1996): 29-37.
Olivares, Julián. “The Streets of Gary Soto.” Latin American Literary Review 18 (January-June, 1990): 32-49.
Soto, Gary. “The Childhood Worries: Or, Why I Became a Writer.” Iowa Review 25 (Spring/Summer, 1995): 104-115.
Williamson, Alan. “In a Middle Style.” Poetry 135 (March, 1980): 348-354.