In Kara Candito’s prize-winning debut collection a “garish/human theatre” comes to life against richly textured geographic and psychic landscapes. These poems are high-speed meditations on a world where Walter Benjamin meets the “glitzy chain-link of Chanel scarves” and Puccini’s Tosca meets the din of the Times Square subway station. Ferociously witty and intensely lyrical, Taste of Cherry speaks to us in a language that is simultaneously private and public, sensual and cerebral.
Taste of Cherry (Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry)
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more
| |||||||||||||||
Browse the best books of summer including blockbusters, beach reads, and editors' picks in our Summer Reading Store. |
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Taste of Cherry derives its name from the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami's film of the same name about a man who considers suicide but decides to live after tasting mulberries. The title invokes something powerfully present in Candito's poems as glimmers of these pivotal moments of sensation emerge, revealing layers of meaning buried beneath the surface of our daily experience."—Katie Willingham, Rain Taxi
(Katie Willingham Rain Taxi )“In Kara Candito’s remarkable first collection, we feel in the presence of a sure, authoritative voice, an intelligence and sensibility capable of registering the complexities of the sensual life.”—Stephen Dunn, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Different Hours
(Stephen Dunn 20081223)“These poems are poised and raw, hard-knuckled and siren-sweet. Their many speakers confess openly to a desire to be transformed, even undone, by unmitigated experience. Fearlessly and with clear-eyed candor, Candito sings a whole new set of constellations—made of ‘the body’s light . . . the din of a hundred conversations’—into bright being.”—Tracy K. Smith, author of Duende
(Tracy K. Smith 20081223)“Just as wry, smartly provocative and interestingly disturbing as its title promises. With this book, Candito announces herself as a poetic voice born to our landscape fully formed, with intelligence and style to spare.”—Erin Belieu, author of Black Box
(Erin Belieu 20081223)“The speaker of these poems wanders again and again ‘where the guidebook says DANGER,’ and even as the poet finds terror and pain in the lavish wreckage of twisted urges, a formal clarity, fueled by a profound hunger for life, keeps asserting itself in Taste of Cherry.”—Dean Young
(Dean Young 20090109)
About the Author
Kara Candito’s work has appeared in such journals as Gulf Coast, Blackbird, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, Best New Poets 2007, and the Florida Review. She has been awarded scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference and the Florida State University College of Arts and Sciences Foundation. She has an MFA from the University of Maryland and is currently a PhD candidate and instructor at Florida State University.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
More About the Author
Kara Candito was born in Boston, MA and grew up on the South Shore. She is the author of Taste of Cherry (University of Nebraska Press 2009), winner of the 2008 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Her work has appeared or will appear in such journals as Blackbird, AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, Nimrod, Contrary Magazine, Best New Poets 2007, Diode, and The Florida Review. She has received awards for her poetry, including an Academy of American Poets Prize and scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She has an MFA from the University of Maryland and is currently a PhD student in creative writing at Florida State University.
Customer Reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By Frank
Format:Paperback
One of the many things that astonished me about this collection is how masterfully Candito changes registers in these wonderfully hypnotic poems. One moment we find that the speaker is "warm champagne slurped though a straw somewhere / south of Palm Springs," the next she is telling us how she is "like the tongue that tests the metal bar / of a meat freezer, I am learning the taste of my own blood." She gives us a title like "Epic Poem Concerning the Poet's Coming of Age as Attis" and then wonderfully confesses, "I like to watch the last scene of 'Easy Rider,' / over and over, genuflecting before the T.V. in my parent's room. I like to watch it // until the world dissembles like air after / an apology." This expert clashing of high and low culture, of heart and mind, edifies while challenging us spiritually and emotionally. It's Candito's willingness, in this regard, to go deeper and further that kept me reading page after page.
Taste of Cherry made me think of George Oppen's idea that "Poets are the legislators of the unacknowledged world." That's what Candito gives us, shapes alluringly for us, wisely legislates for us, the unacknowledged world, over and over again.
In short, reading this book made me see the world, unacknowledged or not, differently, marvelously. I highly recommend it.
Taste of Cherry made me think of George Oppen's idea that "Poets are the legislators of the unacknowledged world." That's what Candito gives us, shapes alluringly for us, wisely legislates for us, the unacknowledged world, over and over again.
In short, reading this book made me see the world, unacknowledged or not, differently, marvelously. I highly recommend it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Tasha Cotter
Format:Paperback
Kara Candito's first book of poetry has received praise far and wide for its unabashed and raw look at the underworld of glitz and glamour. The collection works to undo your notions of sensuality, deconstructing the lovely and scenic and bringing in tools of torture, misuse, and abuse and all its facades. This first collection is broken up into three parts. Since all poems in this first section relate to a trip taken or a specific journey, it is safe to call this small body of poetry in section one The Journey Poems. The poems take place in locales such as Egypt, Rome, and Sicily, among others. Nevermind the foreign scenery or the ocean breeze, Candito is focused on the taste of the sand, the church bells she wants to sleep through and passing out on an ancient floor. The beauty that surely surrounds her is pushed aside and rarely allowed to peep through. It is the beautifully done macabre scenes one remembers of Candito's poetry--not the foreign-sounding locales.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By LadyMurasaki
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Candito's collection is a revelation. Her vision is highly personal-a mixing of Jungian psychology and archetypes slyly turns into frustration with California-but also deeply thoughtful and eerily intuitive-she inhabits the voice of Cady from Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" to bring us the deepest fears of the great author's most wounded but sensitive character. Some poets use imagery from the contemporary world to shock; Candito never does. This is our world she sees, and she wants us to understand how neon, parties, travel, failed relationships and flowers fit into the deepest human experiences. In synthesizing so much, she demonstrates her keen and eerie appreciation of what it means to be human. One has the feeling of falling into the murky psyche itself, which is at work, filtering information, sending out observations and uncomfortable emotions and motivations. And then these impressions are flung back out onto the page. Then there is the language itself, which is gorgeous, and leaves an impression on the mind and heart, like the very best music. The range Candito covers is also impressive--inward poems, poems about places, poems about other people, poems about paintings and fictional characters . . . this is a broad and highly intelligent mind at work, synthesizing and finding connections between the many things that are all around us. I look forward to her next collection.
