Tag Gary Soto

* nosing with quevedo & williams

José Angel Araguz 1 Comment

 

One of the more exciting moments in reading is coming across texts that show a writer’s own reading creeping into their writing. In my own work, I can think of an orange I inadvertantly stole from a Gary Soto poem as well as a prayer reformulated from an Ernest Hemingway short story. These are moments where an influence is unavoidable or inevitable in hindsight. Not outright theft but more moving forward with one’s influences like burrs caught on your clothing after walking through grass.

burrI found such a moment in reading William Carlos Williams recently. While I’ve long admired his poem “Smell” for its ingenuity and directness, learning that he had translated the work of the Spanish Gold Age writer Francisco de Quevedo added another layer of meaning. Quevedo has an infamous sonnet, an “ode” to a rival’s nose, that, when read with Williams in mind, can’t help but conjure up the latter’s own poem. Here are excerpts from Quevedo’s sonnet, “A Una Nariz” (To a Nose):

Érase un hombre a una nariz pegado, 
érase una nariz superlativa, 
érase una nariz sayón y escriba, 
érase un pez espada muy barbado.
…
Érase un naricísimo infinito 
frisón archinariz, caratulera, 
sabañón garrafal, morado y frito.

(Once there was a nose with a man attached,
a superlative nose,
a nose both criminal and scribe,
a swordfish with an overgrown beard.
…
It was an infinity of nostrilisticity,
a towering archnose, a mask,
a proud and painful protruding pimple.)

One can see the exaggeration and wordplay of Quevedo’s original influencing Williams’ poem below. While the speaker in the poem by Williams turns the satire on himself, there is no less enthusiasm and barb in his words. Considering the two poems together, I can’t help but view the question asked in the last line of the Williams poem (Must you have a part in everything?) as mirroring the way reading influences writing.

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Smell – William Carlos Williams

Oh strong-ridged and deeply hollowed
nose of mine! what will you not be smelling?
What tactless asses we are, you and I, boney nose,
always indiscriminate, always unashamed,
and now it is the souring flowers of the bedraggled
poplars: a festering pulp on the wet earth
beneath them. With what deep thirst
we quicken our desires
to that rank odor of a passing springtime!
Can you not be decent? Can you not reserve your ardors
for something less unlovely? What girl will care
for us, do you think, if we continue in these ways?
Must you taste everything? Must you know everything?
Must you have a part in everything?

*

Happy nosing!

José

* four years of the influence

José Angel Araguz 4 Comments

This week marks the four year anniversary of The Friday Influence. So, as is customary:

Yay!

Sharing poems here continues to be a source of delight and honesty. I say honesty because putting into words some of the journey in understanding a poem, of considering and living with a poem, requires reflection and persistence. Poems are as alive as the poets that write them; this implies change. What I feel one week about a lyric will change given a week, a month, a year away from it. Reaching one week’s point of sharing, finding a particular articulation and current insight, is the happy work I put myself to Friday to Friday. Thanks to all of you who come and share in this work!

This week’s poem – Gary Soto’s “Oranges” – is a poem I have come back to often over the years. Over ten years ago, during a summer in which I carried Soto’s selected poems around with me always, I read and reread those poems, followed his early work’s short lines and vivid imagery. Reading it now, I am still impressed with the ease with which narrative and lyric imagery are combined. There’s one moment in particular that remains captivating:

Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.

I’m moved by the way these lines come midway, the image helping to transition between the scenes of the poem, but also by the way the lines could be a poem on their own. The implication is there of things being hard to see, as they are for the speaker in the poem, but there’s also the persistence to see life through moment by glimpsed moment.

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Oranges – Gary Soto

The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge. I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted –
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickle in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn’t say anything.
I took the nickle from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady’s eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.

Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl’s hand
In mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.

*

Happy making!

José