May 08

I’m writing about “The Drought” by Gary Soto because I have actually read some of Soto’s poems before and because I am a farmer’s wife and my financial stability is directly related to whether or not we have rain.  Drought takes away life and in the last stanza when it is said, “And the young who left with a few seeds in each pocket, / Their belts tightened on the fifth notch of hunger—“ it is clear that those who had tried to stay the course and outlast the drought ended up leaving in a pitiful state of health.  The last line about the belt notch is interesting because it is usually used to refer to over eating and needing to “let” one’s belt out a few notches to accommodate the excess food in one’s belly.  I believe this is used here to make the decline in health more defining.  The imagery is very interesting and very relatable.  Everyone knows what a hat rack looks like.  If anyone has been in a drought or even in a place where wind blows most of the year faster than 15mph, they know what birds have a heck of a time trying to fly and sometimes the baby birds are blown straight from their nests and die.  When it is said, “But what continued were the wind that plucked the birds spineless”, I find that either it’s speaking of winds so terrifying that birds have lost the guts or spine to fly about, or literally the wind has battered the birds to a spineless state, death.  A very interesting poem and even more so considering we were just in a severe drought.