kireji: partial portraits & biofictionsby christian favreauPublished by JackPine PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$30.00 ISBN 9781927035436 I have a special interest in reviewing “first” books, in part because it’s been thirty-one years since my own first book was published, and though I’ve followed up with another dozen titles, I still meet folks who claim they liked my first book best. Today I read Montreal writer christian favreau’s first book. Kireji: partial portraits & biofictions is an attractive, hand-sewn chapbook with a cover image of a bird. The book contains nine free verse poems, a business card-sized note to “Please be gentle while handling,” and four actual leaves. Leaves? Now that’s a new one for me, but JackPine Press is all about originality, and favreau’s work definitely fits the press’s mandate to “publish chapbooks whose form and content are both artistically integrated and unique”. What did I find? Firstly, like fellow Canadian poet bpNichol—whom favreau quotes in the opening poem, which is comprised solely of three epigraphs—this new poet also sometimes eschews punctuation. In his second poem, “the finch,” he writes “Id dreamt/Id screamed/all the while unheard,” and he includes a measure of treble clef notes, perhaps to emulate the finch’s…