Customer Reviews

What the Truth Tastes Like

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Martha Silano's "What the Truth Tastes Like" is an extraordinary book of poems! Her wit, evocative use of language, depth of feeling, and sharp intelligence shine through. The poems bring to life a sensibility that appears steeped in everyday life yet also connects with broader, universal themes. I am amazed by her range and her ability to convey in few words, a moment, a look, a memory. This book is truly a delight.

If WHAT THE TRUTH TASTES LIKE included nothing but the poem, "What I Meant to Say Before I Said 'So Long,'" if would be reason enough to buy this sumptuous first book by Martha Silano. In "What I Meant to Say. . . " Silano creates a world as delicate, dangerous, and gleaming as a spider's web, and it brings me to tears. Luckily for us, however, this poem is not alone. Silano lays out a full feast of wonderful verses in a collection that is deliciously unpeggable. She cinematically unfolds an unexpected tragedy, as witnessed by a group of birdwatchers, in "At the Shorebird Festival: Grays Harbor, Washington." She takes on the persona of an angry horse in the stark, edgy "They're Prohibited by City Ordinance." And in "Men of the Stone Age Had No Use for Fractions," she celebrates abundance--with a wink. And such a wink, for Silano, is not unusual. These poems are laced with humor; sometimes subtle, sometimes sly, sometimes silly. In "The Sausage Parade" she serves up past boyfriends with plenty of spice. In "Just Don't Write Any Poems About Niagara Falls," she brings the art of curse-laying to new and hilarious heights. And she responds the way some of us only dream of in "To the Woman Who, When I Went to Heat My Pizza in the Office Microwave, Asked Me, 'Who Are You?'" Not every poem, however, properly shows off Silano's humor and compassion, her enormous appreciation of nature (especially birds) or her knack for telling a tale. "Shrimp Arithmetic" despite its intriguing title, is inaccessible to me after repeated readings. "Notes from the Committee Investigating the Abolishment of Um" doesn't quite live up to the fun of its premise. And while she generally uses her lists of names, objects, and titles to wonderful effect in poems such as "In Praise of Body Hair," "The Man Who Slept in My Bed," the whimsical "In That Other Universe" and the outrageously imaginative "For a Friend Who Sends Me a Flyer on the Art of Ear Candling and News Her Book has Arrived," she pushes her listmaking to excess, without enough heart, in "A Trip to the Yellow Pages: Ba, Be, and So Forth." But who's perfect? WHAT THE TRUTH TASTES LIKE is a rich and triumphant first offering, with many a poem to savor.

I loved this book! The poems in What the Truth Tastes Like, Martha Silano's first collection, are smart, funny, and personal, above all displaying a deep love of language in a search for meaning and connection.

The poems here are about birth, death, and the relationships ended or sustained in between, about childhood and identity. They describe the doings of people in the wild and the backyard: the tide after a man drowns "erases every footprint, and where he lay a flock of whimbrels alights"; the cosmos explained by dad, "post-cookout star-gazer"; the showers of sparks loved by those who "live in the shadow of live volcanoes, the chance we'll awake to at least a dusting of ash."

Inner worlds are explored here engagingly as well. Contemplating ear candling, for example, the speaker follows the flame through the "bony labyrinth" wondering about the contents it will loosen and extrude: "your mother the harbinger's honey the belt goes around your waist ... blue side down? ... Could you have it skip the refusals, the let's just be friends?" Recounting the history of sausages, the poet illuminates not only her own heritage but that of a string of exes through descriptions of their sausages of choice.

"Bring me everything and don't peel it," insists the speaker in the final section of the book. When we "want to know if it's worth springing for a valentine tub or a boat ride to Cave of the Winds and the trilobite wall," Silano will be "the one [we] turn to for advice."

There are so many things to recommend this book of poetry, I don't know where to begin...perhaps just with a list of glowing adjectives. Ms. Silano's poetry is funky, thoughtful, funny, sensual, faintly animist, gently gastronomic, tender, incredibly observant...one could go on and on. I think what I like the most though is the range -- very honest poems about childhood that aren't like the bruised childhood poems we've all read 1,000 times before, then a poem about sausage, then about the Yellow pages, then shorebirds. The author has a way of bringing to your attention things that you never thought about before (What is a "shebang" exactly?) and making you happily run to the dictionary (but not not *too* often) to check out new words such as "pubigerous." Thoughtful, original, and smart without being pretentious. Languid but energizing. Enjoy!

From the first poem ('The Man Who Slept in My Bed'), Silano sings: Merry, zaftig a cappella, a little hoarse with remembering; body-miked for our benefit and to hear herself. She turns up the volume of our world's detail--flowers populate, food predominates, birds know things, human bodies raise, embrace or betray us.

Scenes are lit, the cast grows, a chamber group then an orchestra swells, stills. Silano's poems have a wistful attention: Like generations of soprano Carmens backstage, at intermission, who listen backward to how they've sung, sneaking bites of what the truth tastes like and 'its chorizo-ful wisdom,' 'the sausage parade,' anything to get it right the next act. They enter on cue and blow us away with talent, the emotion, the ingredients, the genera, the common.

All first books should be as good as this one. In this book, we enter into a world of food, relationships and truth. The poet surprises us with sausage parades, spiders the size of ears and a trip through the yellow pages. Martha Silano's word and sound play keeps this book an enjoyable read for anyone who loves language.

I would highly recommend it to poetry lovers or anyone who loves language.

I love this poem!Especially the words this poet used! Everyone should read this inspiring poem! I guarantee you'll love it!