Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House

"These poems probe the precincts of the heart, illuminating a self whose experiences mirror our own unspoken selves. Practicing ruthless honesty and boldness during this psychic journey, Katerina Stoykova generates emotional intensity through an unsparing dialogue with the self. She writes her way to truth, as one of her mentors instructed. These taut poems document the immigrant experience in an address to America that also affirms that each of us is an immigrant as we cross borders of love and self- appraisal to map our own boundaries. True to one of this collection's central images of itinerant birds and imaginative flight, these poems "perch on your palm and home there."—Richard Taylor, author of Elkhorn: Evolution of a Kentucky Landscape

"I love these poems, which are not only brilliant, tender and ironic, reckless and beautifully made, but a real kick in the pants, to boot. Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House manages to be a kind of memoir of the immigrant experience, a break-up letter and a love letter to America, and a deeply serious account of the longing for home rendered with the lightest of touches, with humor and grace and intelligence. This is one of the most original collections of poetry I've read in a long time, and one of the most delightful."—Cecilia Woloch, author of Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem

"There is much to love about the beautifully crafted and moving poems in Between a Bird Cage And a Bird House, especially the probing yet honest interrogation of the opportunity costs of the immigrant experience and a need to always reconjugate, reconstruct and ultimately return to some place recognizable as home."—Frank X Walker, Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York

"Katerina Stoykova is among America's most important talents. In her poems, I always find an exceptional voice that belongs to her alone. As I turn the pages through her dazzling new collection Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House, again and again and again, I find myself discovering something astonishing, necessary and new about a world I assumed I had long known."—Kathleen Driskell, author of Vine Temple