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BRISTOL, R.I.__ On the third floor of the Global Heritage Hall, Renee Soto sits in her office nestled into a long, bending hallway of offices overlooking the Roger Williams University quad. She wears silver bracelets on both wrists that jingle when she moves her hands. On the bookshelf sit books ranging from the epic poem Beowulf to works by Dylan Thomas. On the wall hangs a framed black and white photograph of two plants that have grown together, creating a coil.
“I love that picture," Soto says. "It’s almost like two plants came together and said to each other ‘Let’s have a party! It’s the plant party!’”
Renee Soto, 45, has many faces on—and off of—the Roger Williams campus. Some might see her as a professor up for tenure in classes such as Form in Poetry and various senior seminars. Some might see her as a published poet in literary magazines and websites such as storySouth, Crab Orchard Review, and Cimarron Review or the winner of the Academy of American Poets University Prize.
But as for artists all over the country and some Roger Williams students, Soto is seen as the editor-in-chief of the annually published student-run literary magazine, Roger. The magazine publishes poetry and prose from authors all over the world and has given many artists the opportunity to showcase their work. As editor, Soto is responsible for the hundreds of pieces of mail coming to the Creative Writing department in order to be published.
“It is really humbling that there are these stories that come to me. I have a responsibility to be respectful to the writers and to their work,” says Soto. “I run the best of what we get and the best of what we get is worth publishing.”
The Roger staff consists of Soto and nine others, who are all Roger Williams students.
“Working with students and teaching them the art of publishing is a challenge because there’s no room to fail," she says. "Writers from all over the world expect us to make a magazine every year and students don’t know what to do. But it is a lot of fun.”
“We try to maintain Roger’s reputation for being a really professional magazine,” says Katlyn Proctor, a sophomore on the Roger staff. “I like [this class] because it gives me a chance to see other peoples’ writing. Before taking this class, I never considered going into publishing. Now I think that maybe I can be a Renee some day.”
But long before Soto began sifting through Roger mail, she was a little girl yearning to read and write. One of her earliest memories was when her mother taught her to read.
“I felt separated from everybody else when I could read because it was the one way I could rebel and not be in trouble,” Soto recalls. “I have always liked wordplay and words that were spelled different and meant something different but sounded the same, like ‘balm’ and ‘bomb’. Those words are so completely opposite.”
Soto made her debut as a writer when she began to write and direct plays for her brothers and sisters to perform in: “I was the oldest of six and we would tell the stories of holidays like Christmas. I come from a strong Catholic background. We would incorporate song and dance into the shows. I took it very seriously.”
She recalls her favorite production, which she wrote during her freshman year of high school.
“It was the first time we had a Christmas baby, my baby brother Richard. So we went all out," Soto says. "My sister, Rosie, was to be the angel standing over the baby and the big theatrical moment would be her saying, ‘And the baby was born!’ But when it came to her line, she said, ‘And the baby was boring!’ Not only did she ruin my script, but it reminded me of the fluidity of language.”
Aside from language itself, one of Soto’s strong passions is her family and staying connected with them. For years, Soto spent her spare time writing letters and poems to her grandparents in southern California.
“I’d make them books for presents and when my grandmother died, I got to look at all of the poems I ever wrote her. It was kind of freaky,” she says. “When you’re in a big family, it’s hard to get away and this was how I could get away.”
After her first full year of graduate school, Soto had her first poetic moment of clarity when her poems began forming not as sentences, but as lines.
“All poetry is, is experimenting with language,” she explains. “I got so excited when that happened that I started paying more attention.”
When she completed graduate school, Soto took a position at the Southern Poetry Review, where she met Thomas Howard, professor of geography at Armstrong State University, who would later become her husband.
“Renee’s interest in poetry, both writing it and teaching it, became clear to me and this was one of the things that drew me to her," says Professor Howard. "I do what I can to encourage her, and safeguard time and space for her to work.”
In the past two years, with the death of her grandparents and her nephew, Soto has become closer with her family by creating a sturdy support system.
“When you’re faced with something so unanswerable, all you have is kinsman-ship. There’s no access by something as mechanical as language to get there,” she says. “We want language to do it all and we can’t. It’s so limiting.”
In 2003, Soto was offered the position at Roger Williams University and was encouraged to build back up a literary magazine which had been shut down by the administration a few years earlier.
English Department Chairman Dianne Comiskey, Soto’s close friend and mentor, recalls the first years of the magazine: “It took Renee a while to get it out there and be recognized. But she gets right down to it. She has a great deal of integrity. She has been a great colleague and she’s always willing to help out.”
“I’ve never seen anyone so selfless. Everything she does is for the better of someone else. She really makes the Roger staff feel like a family,” says Katlyn Proctor.
Since Roger has become a huge part of her life, Soto believes in the philosophy of the magazine, its team, and its published writers.
“Who knows where this magazine will go? I think it matters that there’s a place where anyone can go to read a really good poem or story and if I have the opportunity to build one of these places, how could I not care?” she says. “Everyone is charged with some artistic expression. I think that art can save us. Sometimes I want to hear someone else’s words. It’s like help for me. It comes through text.”
Melanie Puckett (Over 30)
For this feature story, I will interview Renee Soto. She is a part of the creative writing department and is a published poet. She also is head of the staff of Roger Literary Magazine. For my other sources I would like to interview other creative writing staff such as Professors Delaney and Braver. In addition to this, I will talk to some of the students who are on the Roger staff. I would also want to find someone who might have inspired her for some of the work that she has done. I will interview Dianne Comiskey, who is the head of the English department.
- "in the beginning there was the word and the word was God"
- communicating with all of these people
- learned from a student three years ago:
because you're not trying to figure out a puzzle, i thought that was really insightful, you don't want a poem to have a secret message
- "Wisconsin, cottage in the woods with Tom
- i would not have had that metaphor if i hadn't met Tom
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