Candy : poems /
Dan Albergotti's Candy is a book steeped in sound and silence. Sound in the form of song, of chaotic cacophony, and of the drone (sometimes natural, sometimes manufactured) that forms the ambient soundtrack of history and our seemingly apocalyptic present. And silence in the sense both of the v...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Baton Rouge :
Louisiana State University Press,
[2024].
|
| Series: | Sewanee poetry.
|
| Summary: | Dan Albergotti's Candy is a book steeped in sound and silence. Sound in the form of song, of chaotic cacophony, and of the drone (sometimes natural, sometimes manufactured) that forms the ambient soundtrack of history and our seemingly apocalyptic present. And silence in the sense both of the void's natural silence and of the failure to speak-of people being either dumbstruck or in denial, not speaking because they cannot or will not. In the book's first poem, the "savanna's ambient song is interrupted // by a sharp crack that sounds like a gunshot, / the zebra's kick finding the lion's jaw." And in the poems that follow, we hear "a sibilant song that swims in the soil," the hiss of "a ventilator's rasp," "the interrogating song of a lark," "white noise coher[ing] into whispered names," a mule's bray sounding "like a peal of trumpet and kettledrum," and the chirps of cell phones mimicking birdsong, all of this set in relief against the persistent, relentless silence of the universe in the face of human suffering. And there are poems that examine sound crafted into art in the form of song, from the national anthem to tracks by Joy Division, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and Sun Kil Moon, in which the speakers consider the capacity of song to deceive and placate, to tease with the ideas of comfort and possibility, to transcend and ultimately to devastate. Throughout, these sounds and intermittent silences provide the soundtrack for poems that interrogate the nature of truth and myth, and that restlessly search for meaning in a reticent universe, ultimately unwilling to take no for an answer as they strive to find an ever-elusive yes. |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | vi, 69 pages ; 24 cm. |
| ISBN: | 9780807182543 0807182540 |