“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.”
—Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor, The Norton Shakespeare

“If we needed any evidence that Shakespeare is still (in that horrible word) “relevant,” and if we needed any that Gary Soto is an authentic voice of what poetry can be—must be—at this moment, You Kiss By th’ Book provides it. Soto uses a line of Shakespeare as the first line of each of his new, wonderful poems, making something completely and recognizably his own. These are poems that are playful, smart, surprising, and affecting—poems that are easy to read and difficult to forget.”
—David Scott Kastan, Yale University

“Soto may be the most exciting poet of poverty in America to emerge since James Wright and Philip Levine.”
—Poetry

“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