"What lyrical gems. Poems like diamonds faceted with the Japanese-American diaspora, our lives scattered and thrust into Lee Ann Roripaugh's utterly exquisite canvas of sky and pen."

"Lee Ann Roripaugh's poems are stunningly beautiful evocations of a time and place that exists now only in memory; yet is so vividly portrayed that one feels as if her internment experience is one's own. I strongly recommend these wonderful poems."

"Lee Ann Roripaugh's sharp, pungent lines are a delight."

"BEYOND HEART MOUNTAIN is a stunning book of poems. Feeling and experience arise with a direct clarity out of these chiseled poems. Her language combines wide nuances of feeling with memorable portraits of love, suffering, and deprivation. This is particularly so in the central section, which is a kind of spoon river anthology of the Japanese internment camp in the U.S. during World War II. But this is true throughout BEHOND HEART MOUNTAIN. Delicacy and toughness coexist in the language here. Sharp observation and rich feeling offered up like jewels in the palm of your hand."

"What unusual combinations poet Lee Ann Roripaugh creates -- the sharp imagery of haiku for an antelope hunt, the origami of a peony with a tornado warning. Encounters between Japanese and American experience -- from a bi-racial childhood, the concentration camp at Heart Mountain, Hiroshima -- give rise to poems that are hilarious, endearing, vivid, lovely, and sometimes break your heart."