is own life. He enjoyed writing poems about his past, which has remained a source for his works. Soto was most fascinated by Spanish and Latin poets especially Pablo Neruda and his odes to tomatoes and artichokes. After reading Neruda's works Soto truly focused his poetry on his childhood and wrote about common childhood memories of fruits of the valley, especially the orange, baseball, dogs, and alleys; he wrote about these objects in order to bring out their simple beauty. Soto also noticed that many poets wrote about places where they grew up or places, which inspired them; for example James Wright wrote about his home of Ohio and West Virginia and Gary Snyder wrote of the Sierra Nevada and Japan where he studied Zen Buddhism and the pacifistic ways . After making this discovery Soto decided to write about his childhood home of California's San Joaquin Valley. When writing of Fresno he wrote about his observations of human violence, burglaries, and fistfights. Yet, he also talks of nature, the orange groves, vineyards, the Kings River, and the Sequoias. Soto now wrote about the beauty and ugliness of his childhood and life in the valley. Most of Soto's poems come from his memories during his childhood and youth. He takes his poetic works very seriously; in fact, he once spent an entire week working and revising a 14-line poem. (Soto 5-7)
             Other than poetry, Soto has written novels and short stories since college. He produced a published poetry collection at age 25. This work The Elements of San Joaquin won the 1976 United States Award of the International Poetry Forum. Soto's autobiographical pieces collected in a book called Living Up the Street, which won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation. His other young-adult novels are Taking Sides, Pacific Crossing, and The Skirt. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines and he has earned many awards for his poetic works such as the
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