Poetry is the Digging

Journey to the Truth of the Hurt

Christopher Soto’s Sad Girl Poems is a collection of griefs taking the shape of nesting dolls; each grief revealing a new grief to observe. At the core of the griefs explored is the death of the speaker’s love, Rory. In “Those Sundays”, the poem begins with the speaker’s father. As the reader makes their way through the poem with the speaker’s father sharing space with Rory, they are ultimately led to Rory. The visual layout of the poem acts as the bread crumb trail leading the reader to the speaker’s secret. With the use of brackets and indented stanzas, Soto whispers to the truth with subtlety encouraging the reader to constantly question what are the differences between what is said in the brackets versus outside of them.