Second Grade
An Italian sonnet is a form that at different periods throughout history has ideally expressed the complexity of emotions: power, idealistic love, ambitions, heartache, loss, and childhood. It is split up into lines of eleven syllables, also known as a hendecasyllabic verse, that tends to follow a rhyming pattern such as abba abba. This allows the poem to be split into almost two parts, the first being a premise (the first 8 lines included), and the rest of the sestet supports the premise. We can see this form’s capacity to reveal the nuance of idioms in Alberto Rios’s poem “Second Grade,” where the innocence of a young child is disrupted by witnessing the forced conformity of another. The first line of this poem ends with “School”, which rhymes with the fourth verse (“Rual”), and the eighth verse (“cool”). Within these stanzas, the speaker is describing his life at his elementary school, in which they are “swatted” for speaking Spanish, and his fascination with a kid named Raul. He even goes as far as to say that Raul dresses as “I-don’t-know-but-kiss-my-ass on-sunday-and-i’ll-show-you-Very-cool” (Rios 307). The contrast between “I-don’t-know,” and the aggressive choice of words in this phrase suggests an innocence to the speaker. Not only is the word choice easy to follow and understand, but it is a type of language that a child would throw together, as if he is repeating words he has heard, and putting them in a sentence in which he does not fully understand the meaning behind it. In other words, his language such as the words “Very-Cool” is that used of a young child, showing his innocence and lack of understanding the situations around him.The sestet follows the same pattern as the premise, however it only confirms the forced conformity that was assumed in the premise. The speaker describes Raul by repeating that he thought that “he [was] the last Pachuco left and he got expelled for saying so” (Rios 317). A Pachuco is a young Mexican-American who is stylish and usually belonged to some type of local gang. Now, Raul being only in second grade most likely does not understand what a gang is, nor is he most likely a part of one. Therefore, allowing him to be expelled just affirms the forced conformity from the premise. The rhyming patterns of the Italian sonnet draw us to these idioms and show the complexity of this character’s childhood.
Rios, Alberto. “Second Grade.” An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art, Edited by Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes, U of Michigan P, 2016, p. 307.
