“Intimate, spare, lucid, Masutani's poetry moves through a lifetime––from the domestic to the profound. Like a glass of cool water when I didn’t know I was parched. His poems revived me. And made me laugh aloud too!”–Hiromi Goto, author of Shadow Life.

“The poet Fred Cogswell spoke of ‘star people.’ You chance upon them. They emanate a certain deep inner glow. Matsuki Masutani has that bright starlight. You will know it when you meet/read him.”–Joy Kogawa.

“These brief poems record the act of taking notice. There’s a Zen smile at work as Masutani notes the dailyness of long marriage, effects of immigration, and life’s looming end to the daily. Each poem a ‘small frame’ through which ‘dark waters / dance.’–Daphne Marlatt, author of Intertidal: The Collected Earlier Poems 1968-2008.

“With nuanced charm, humour, and a mind of gentle insight and care, Masutani turns his eye to one moment after another, as if considering items at a garage sale. But this is no ordinary eye, and no ordinary poet; his years and struggles, his stumbles and realizations have taught him that to be intimate with all things is one way to express the meaning of a life. In these poems I laughed with him, and felt the trembling world when he came to know “it is earth-shattering / to keep this ordinary life / from shattering.”–Peter Levitt, author of One Hundred Butterflies.