And This House is Only a Nest

＂And This House is Only a Nest begins with an abuelo-a grandpa-who is not the gentle sort but one that conjures up fear, anger, work, stubbornness, and resilience. Then a peek at the poet’s father, his mother, the mocosos on his street, classmates, locos sparking up joints, misinterpreted Bible passages, soccer as metaphor-realistic scenes rendered like Dutch paintings. One of the best poems references the Los Angeles Dodgers, the late innings, with ’three kids, two strikes... while visiting his imprisoned father. Surrounded by troubles in the initial poems, the last poems soften into a coda that is something like a sigh, a sigh of relief leaving that ’lopsided’ house called childhood. Having searched for an adult man to emulate, the poet discovers, to his surprise and ours, that he has become that man, a husband, a father, a contemplative figure.＂

-Gary Soto, author of Baseball in April and Other Stories