'Mitsui's poems are memorable, finely honed--combining imagistically startling vignettes, witty and melancholy ars poetica, and moving personal reminiscence. Yet the many poetic memorials to Japanese American history are this poet's finest accomplishment.'--Garret Hongo

SELECTED PEOMS
from Journal of the Sun 1974
-- Destination: Tule Lake Relocation Center
-- Photograph of a Child
-- Picture of a Japanese Farmer
-- Section Hand, Great Northern Railway
-- The Morning My Father Died
-- Watching Bon Odori
-- Because It Is Close and My Mother Is
-- Shrike on Dead Tree
-- Ohashi in a Shower
-- Painting of a Hermitage
-- Nisei: Second-Generation Japanese American
from Crossing the Phantom River 1978
-- Allowance
-- When Father Came Home for Lunch
-- Katori Maru
-- Holding Center, Tanforan Race Track
-- Block 18, Tule Lake Relocation Camp
-- The Table Lamp
-- Samurai
-- Surrounded by Autumn
-- Waterfall at Dusk
-- Exhibition
-- Painting by a Mental Patient
-- Cape Alava
-- For a Chinese Pheasant
-- New Lines for Fortune Cookies
-- For the Ballerina in Death Valley Junction
from After the Long Train 1986
-- Shakuhachi
-- The East Watch House
-- Minoru Mitsui
-- Because of My Father's Job
-- Wooden Flower Vase
-- Visiting My Mother at Kawabe House
-- After a Stranger Calls
-- Letter to Tina Koyama
-- In Sight of Purple Crocus
NEW POEMS
Flexing Our Rippling Metaphors
-- English Teachers
-- What the Math Teacher Told Jim
-- Isla Mujeres: My American Sonnet, 1986
-- Letter to Ransom from Green Lake
-- The World of Becoming
-- Closure
-- In Front of the Geoduck Display
-- Paris Windows: Some Linked Bantu
-- Because You Left Three Rocks
-- Graffiti in a University Restroom
-- Rationale
Cleveland Was Farther Away Than July
-- You are Beautiful
-- Christmas Poem, 1987
-- Christmas Poem for Lilly
-- Southwest of Stovepipe Wells
-- Tohono O'Odham Indian Cemetery
-- A Birthday Poem for Lilly
-- Ode to My '94 Honda Passport
-- From a Window of Lowell's Cafe
Painting Sunlight on the Wooden Wall of a House
-- Getting Ready for Grandparenthood
-- My Mother Juggling Bean Bags
-- Wedding Poem for Janet & Drew
-- At the Tom Mix Memorial
-- Mitsui in English Means "Three Wells"
-- Spring Poem for the Sake of Breathing
Acknowledgments