"These are poems that embrace everything in the story of Eden including the Fall, as in the poem titled 'Eden' where those bruised avocados fallen from the tree were not 'inedible, / but softened and sweet.' Otsuji’s poems, like the 'sprig of cherry blossoms pressed between / the pages of a book,' preserve memories that only live because he included them in this long-awaited collection."—
Susanna Lang,
Rhino
“Derek N. Otsuji’s
The Kitchen of Small Hours is largely an exercise in honoring the dead. Moving lyrics pop off the page, propelled by the momentum of the past.”—
Chris McKinney, author of
The Tattoo and
Midnight, Water City
“
The Kitchen of Small Hours proves what many fans of Otsuji already knew: he is one of the most talented poets currently writing in Hawaiʻi
. This beautifully crafted book casts an ‘inner light’ on family and food, culture and tradition, death and dreams. Like ‘ink brushed on rice paper,’ these words reveal truths that only poetry ‘gives us eyes to see.’”—
Craig Santos Perez, author of
Habitat Threshold
“Otsuji welcomes us into a multigenerational world of family, history, parables, work songs, and secrets—where conversations with the dead intertwine with the rituals of the living. This is a book steeped in love and attention, one that recognizes that ‘the bombed station, the sea of pleading / eyes, the cool of the river grass’ inevitably bring loss, though we are instructed: ‘Don’t grieve, says the light. Tangerines / like goldfish swim in their groves. Nothing is lost.’ There is a sweetness and reverence here that is rare in contemporary poetry. It is something the body can experience only in the reading, something layered into the word love—as we glimpse an entire century of life and more within Otsuji’s
The Kitchen of Small Hours.”—
Brian Turner, author of
Here, Bullet
“Otsuji’s poems don’t seem to fixate on the question of who should, or gets to, write what—rather, they seem bound only to honesty and honor toward memory.”—
Kalani Padilla,
Pleiades— -