You Kiss by th’ Book: New Poems from Shakespeare’s Line

In his engaging new collection, National Book Award finalist Gary Soto creates poems that each begin with a line from Shakespeare and then continue in Soto’s fresh and accessible verse.

Drawing on moments from the sonnets, Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and others, Soto illuminates aspects of the original while taking the poems in directions of their own, strategically employing the color of ‘thee’ and ‘thine,’ kings, thieves, and lovers.

The results are inspired, by turns meditative, playful, and moving, and consistently fascinating for the conversation they create between the Bard’s time and language and our own here and now.