SOURCE: “Poetry and Masculinity on the Anglo/Chicano Border: Gary Soto, Robert Frost, and Robert Hass,” in The Calvinist Roots of the Modern Era, edited by Aliki Barnstone, Michael Tomasek Manson, and Carol J. Singley, University Press of New England, 1997, pp. 263-80.

In the following essay, Manson contends that Soto's poetry should be considered outside of the American poetic tradition, contrasting his work with that of Robert Hass and Robert Frost.

The guy who pinned Me was named Bloodworth, a meaningful name. That night I asked Mom what our name meant in Spanish. She stirred crackling papas and said it meant Mexican. 

—Gary Soto, “The Wrestler's Heart”

In this scene from his autobiographical sequence Home Course in Religion (1991), the adolescent Gary Soto wrestles not only with an Anglo empowered by a “meaningful name” but also with his manhood as he tries to make sense out of his defeat...