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Excerpt from
Today it's going to cost us twenty dollars
To live. Five for a softball. Four for a book,
A handful of ones for coffee and two sweet rolls,
Bus fare, rosin for your mother's violin.
We're completing our task. The tip I left
For the waitress filters down
Like rain, wetting the new roots of a child
Gary Soto's Home Page
Gary Soto at the Academy of American Poets
Gary Soto's recipe for frijoles
Interview with Gary Soto at Pedestal magazine
I’m a quick writer. I know several poets, including my good friend Chris Buckley, who slave over their poems. For me there is worry, but the thought of revision sounds too "workshop-ish." I don’t believe that the giants like Neruda or Hikmet or Vallejo worried about revision. If a poem doesn’t work--and a lot of mine don’t work--I put it away, usually for good.
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