Sky Country

by Christine Kitano

Overview

Christine Kitano's second poetry collection elicits a sense of hunger—an intense longing for home and an ache for human connection. Channeling both real and imagined immigration experiences of her own family—her grandmothers, who fled Korea and Japan; and her father, a Japanese American who was incarcerated during WWII—Kitano's ambitious poetry speaks for those who have been historically silenced and displaced.

Christine Kitano's first collection of poetry, Birds of Paradise, was published by Lynx House Press. She lives in Ithaca, NY, where she is an assistant professor of creative writing, poetry, and Asian American literature at Ithaca College.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781942683445
Publisher:	BOA Editions, Ltd.
Publication date:	08/21/2017
Series:	American Poets Continuum
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	104
File size:	832 KB

About the Author

Christine Kitano’s first collection of poetry, Birds of Paradise, was published in 2011 by Lynx House Press. She received her BA from the University of California, her MFA from Syracuse University, and her PhD in English and Creative Writing from Texas Tech University. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA, and currently lives in Ithaca, NY, where she is an assistant professor of creative writing, poetry, and Asian American literature at Ithaca College.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

A Leaving … 1

I
Sky Country … 3

II
Gaman … 11
February, 1943 … 12
Equinox … 13
I Will Explain Hope … 14
Fireflies … 15
About the Trees … 16

III
Leaving California … 19
Before the Divorce, a Dry Thunderstorm … 20
Ancestors … 21
Lucky Come Hawai‘i … 22
Summer: Insomniac Stages Her Love … 23
Monologue of the Dental Assistant … 24
Insomniac in Winter … 26
Monologue of the Fat Girl … 27
Insomniac in Spring … 29
Choose Your Own Adventure: Go South … 30
Insomniac in Fall … 31
Worship … 32
Insomniac Starts an Exercise Routine … 33

IV
Years Later, Washing Dishes, A Vision … 35
The Night Before Your 28th Birthday … 36
Roofing … 37
Bring in the Flowers Before the Santa Anas … 38
Autobiography of the Poet at Sixteen … 39
A Story With No Moral … 41
Friday Night Affair … 46

V
1942: In Response to Executive Order 9066 … 48
Grandmother Tells Me a Story: Passing the Lake, Korea, 1952 … 49
Chicken Soup … 50
Persimmons … 52
Earthquake Drills … 53
For the Korean Grandmother on Sunset Boulevard … 54

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The poems in Sky Country weave, unravel, and stitch together history and time with such a fierce originality that the images buzz in the mind. Lyrically vibrant and sonically alive, Kitano’s gorgeous poems remind us that we are always linked to immigration, to the women that raised us, and it's through our own language that we do the honoring." —Ada Limón

"Christine Kitano writes with clarity and honesty about displacement, deracination, and cultural identity. Her poems in this book convey the dignity of the immigrant in America, the 'sky country' of the title. In one of the most moving of them, ‘A Story with No Moral,’ we can see that indeed there is moral depth to all that she writes. She expresses that depth when she affirms, in 'Autobiography of the Poet at Sixteen,' 'we are built for life, / for love, which means / we are built for pain.' These poems are testimonies of survival and we need their witness as much as ever." —Mark Jarman, author of The Heronry

"The poems in Sky Country sound far from home, stricken with homesickness, and saturated with longing. While they include both personal and collective history, they're spoken in the voice of someone strangely alienated from the former and unaccounted for and excluded from the latter. Beautiful and moving." —Li-Young Lee

Editorial Reviews

08/21/2017
Kitano (Birds of Paradise) traces the relationships between family, memory, and language in the immigrant experience. The speakers of Kitano’s poems are often daughters and granddaughters struggling to connect with and make sense of the histories of violence that precede them. In the book’s title poem, the speaker says of a grandmother, “She knows how history can wipe away a person’s language.” That same grandmother appears again, in “Grandmother Tells Me a Story: Passing the Lake, Korea 1952.” “Her metaphors// and my poor Korean commingle into myth,” Kitano writes. Ambivalence, longing, and a sense of alienation from the past permeate many of the poems. Kitano speaks to the breach that exists between old-world ancestors and a younger new-world generation: she observes, “How far and fast it travels, this light/ that is already dead. How far and fast/ it must journey, the prayer whispered in the dark.” Kitano’s alluring, well-crafted poems are attuned to tragedy and loss, yet an element of wonder shines through. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Kitano’s alluring, well-crafted poems are attuned to tragedy and loss, yet an element of wonder shines through." —Publishers Weekly

"The poems in Sky Country sound far from home, stricken with homesickness, and saturated with longing. While they include both personal and collective history, they're spoken in the voice of someone strangely alienated from the former and unaccounted for and excluded from the latter. Beautiful and moving." —Li-Young Lee

"Christine Kitano writes with clarity and honesty about displacement, deracination, and cultural identity. Her poems in this book convey the dignity of the immigrant in America, the 'sky country' of the title. In one of the most moving of them, ‘A Story with No Moral,’ we can see that indeed there is moral depth to all that she writes. She expresses that depth when she affirms, in 'Autobiography of the Poet at Sixteen,' 'we are built for life, / for love, which means / we are built for pain.' These poems are testimonies of survival and we need their witness as much as ever." —Mark Jarman, author of The Heronry

"The poems in Sky Country weave, unravel, and stitch together history and time with such a fierce originality that the images buzz in the mind. Lyrically vibrant and sonically alive, Kitano’s gorgeous poems remind us that we are always linked to immigration, to the women that raised us, and it's through our own language that we do the honoring." —Ada Limón

"Combing cultural and personal history, Kitano is generous in revealing her family lore and the emotional politics of settlement and displacement. Meant to firmly focus and guide the reader, her poems point to the tragedies and triumphs of living in a world that creates us and destroys us, sometimes all in one day.” –Booklist

From the Publisher