You Kiss by th' Book

New Poems from Shakespeare's Line

Gary Soto

• Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781452148564
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Poésie

Inspired by Shakespeare, an award-winning poet creates "smart, surprising and affecting [poetry]... Poems that are easy to read and difficult to forget" (David Scott Kastan, Yale University). 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 source material while taking his 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. "I read Gary Soto's poems with delight. There's no one I know, certainly in this language, who writes like him." —Gerald Stern, National Book Award–winning poet "Soto insists on the possibility of a redemptive power, and he celebrates the heroic, quixotic capacity for survival in human beings and the natural world." — Publishers Weekly "Gary Soto is a consummate storyteller... Intelligent, funny, and bitingly honest. He is also a craftsman, a master of metaphor and simile, his language capable of dazzling somersaults." —Martin Espada, National Book Award–winning poet "Shakespeare's words are never more alive than when they are being seized upon, twisted, remade and made anew. Gary Soto, a brilliant recycler, has laden his ship with old gold. Himself a brilliant recycler, Shakespeare might well have been pleased." — The Norton Shakespeare

TWO

Thereby hangs a tale.

As You Like It

What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wildfowl?

That they wing south in winter, north in summer,

That they tweet for pleasure,

That they narrow their eyes when stroked,

That they clack their beaks before they feast,

That they drink from their own lean tracks,

That they are sleek and colored splendidly,

That they float like cork.

They are delightful à l’orange,

And their wings will pull free like stockings.

The plucked and noble wildfowl offers feathers

For your pillow and this, my good fellow,

Explains your dream of flying.

Twelfth Night (4.2.49–50)

You blocks, you stones,

You children of mine

Now turned thieves!

You stole bread

And apples

Until you were caught—

What, the belt in youth

Did not sting enough?

You blocks, you stones,

The jailor will grind you to dust

And carry you away in wind.

As for my punishment,

May this dust fly into my eyes

And blind me.

Julius Caesar (1.1.35)

Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse,

How are we to believe you?

You praise the apple and the pie equally,

And walnuts you like, the strawberries and blueberries.

You praise Sunday but Monday is also a favorite,

And spring is delicious and summer heady with sumptuous clouds.

You cuddle a kitten and cuddle a baby—what’s the difference?

Praise to the scholar and his opposite, the imbecile!

Praise to the manor on the hill and the manor in the valley!

Praise to the Protestants and the Catholics with their trinkets!

Praise to the goat for, as do you, the beast likes everything.

Sonnet 84 (14)

The evil that men do lives after them

And is found in politics. The statesman says,

“My palms itch.” Thus, we must pay.

But good men do dwell in tombs.

These saints did not itch, they did not lie,

They did not budge a clackety bone

For dishonest work.

Passed on, evil seethes and grows.

Julius Caesar (3.2.76)

Drunk? and speak parrot?

Speak hog and cow,

And the fourth language, donkey?

Drink makes us sing and brag,

And if the corks fly,

If the brew foams

In tankers,

Then we revel

And recount our journeys,

All fanciful tales.

We recount lasses

Who loved us

In spite of our stink

And drab cloaks.

We recount bears

Who chased us into trees

So tall we could

See the Isle of Wight

From such heights—

Improbable babble

That makes us slap our knees.

Drunk, we speak parrot,

Hog and cow,

Dog and rooster,

And toward morning

Bray the language of donkeys.

Othello (2.3.268)

The fault and glimpse of newness,

The first impression,

As when the earl arrived tall as a door,

Feather in hat, sword with a single ...