What Poets Are Like (Sasquatch Books) is a collection of sixty short prose pieces by Gary Soto, a California poet and children’s author: “moments of a writer’s inner and public life, close moments with friends and strangers, occasional reminders of a poet’s generally low place in the cultural hierarchy, time spent with cats, and the curious work of writing.” Young poets reading this book while considering their future might well decide to bail before getting in too deep. Sure, they’d miss the excitement, the racing pulse, that comes from practising the highest of the literary arts, but to judge from Soto’s acerbic observations, poets in their later years are likely to express a mix of regret, envy and bitterness, at the undeserved success of others (Soto on Danielle Steel: “while Ms Steel goes first class, champagne in her jeweled hand, I, a poet, will go economy, peanuts spilling from the bag I tear open with my teeth”); at the repeated rejections (“the poem begins with me in a gloomy mood after having received a form rejection from a literary magazine in the Midwest that no one has ever heard of”); at the heartlessness of teachers who might photocopy an entire 146-page book for use in class (“If the school had done the honorable thing—bought a classroom set of this book—I would have earned $12.6. Was that asking too much?”). But What Poets Are Like also recalls moments of pure joy, such as might come when a poem has been accepted: “I did a jig around the oak dining table, the place where I wrote at all hours, the crumbs of my meals jigging, too, as I pounded my fist against the surface.” Poetry: there’s no life like it.