The Kitchen of Small Hours (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry)

The Kitchen of Small Hours (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry)
by: Derek N. Otsuji (author) (Author)
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
Publication Date: 30 Oct. 2021
Language: English
Print Length: 96 pages
ISBN-10: 0809338408
ISBN-13: 9780809338405
Book Description
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About the Author

Review “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 About the Author Derek N. Otsuji, an associate professor of English at Honolulu Community College, was awarded the 2019 Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He received the Editor’s Choice Award for poems published in the fortieth-anniversary issue of Bamboo Ridge, the longest running independent literary journal in Hawaii. His poems have appeared in Rhino, Missouri Review, Indiana Review, Pleiades, and the Threepenny Review.