Birds of Paradise

"Birds of Paradise is an apt title for the collection, as paradise exists only in the imagination . . . And, birds of paradise are only resemblances . . . The poems thus leave one feeling close and remote at the same time, estranged and yet familiar."—Henry W. Leung, Lantern Review Blog, April 2012

"Newcomer Christine Kitano writes with purpose and intensity about the disturbing subjects of her youth, her family interned in camps, her unborn twin, her mother's cruelty, her father's death. Throughout it all, the grey, almost invisible child, 'born of everybody's second choice' watches wonders and survives. 'Someone is waiting for me to die,' she writes, 'to crack my bones / open in search of music.' A haunting debut."—Dorianne Laux