Home Course in Religion

by Gary Soto

A collection of poems dealing with issues involving religion

Genres: Poetry

77 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Gary Soto is the author of eleven poetry collections for adults, most notably New and Selected Poems, a 1995 finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the National Book Award. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly, Poetry International, and Poetry, which has honored him with the Bess Hokin Prize and the Levinson Award and by featuring him in the interview series Poets in Person. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. For ITVS, he produced the film “The Pool Party,” which received the 1993 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Film Excellence. In 1997, because of his advocacy for reading, he was featured as NBC’s Person-of-the-Week. In 1999, he received the Literature Award from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, the Author-Illustrator Civil Rights Award from the National Education Association, and the PEN Center West Book Award for Petty Crimes. He divides his time between Berkeley, California and his hometown of Fresno.

Reviews

[Maughn Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are beautiful autobiographical ruminations on Soto's Catholic Mexican American boyhood, his confusing teenage years, and on being an adult son, sibling, father and husband. Soto's stories illustrate over and over again that living a good life isn't easy or clear. He finds religion, martial arts and study helpful, but only by bringing his own doubt and resistance to each tradition. I'll use the poem "The History of Karate" to teach about masculinity this semester. And here are some lines I loved from "The Asking" ...

That prayers are not answered
Means very little. It's the prayer itself,
A chill from the shoulders. That I ask,
Show Yourself, and in my dreams I see only cars,
Some trees, faces as flat as nickels.
This, too, means very little. It's the asking
And the prayer, the clean moment,
As now....

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this book of poetry as a teen. Checked it out from the library, I think. And it stuck with me all these years. Bought a copy because I wanted to re-read it. Still good, maybe not quite as good as I had remembered.

Soto's style of poetry is storytelling in stream of consciousness. No rhyming. Mostly simple language, although he conjures vivid scenes which might seem ordinary in real life, but take on extra meaning in poetry.

Soto is Catholic. A lot of his subject matter involves confusion about his impulses vs. his religion. Both as a child and as an adult. I think that's probably what resonated with me most when I was a teen.

If you enjoy poetry and seeing life through another's eyes, you could do worse than Soto's Home Course in Religion.