Candy: A Collection To Satisfy Your Sweetest Cravings
Candy: A Collection to Satisfy Your Sweetest Cravings
Candy:
A Collection to Satisfy Your Sweetest Cravings, is an eclectic
collection which ranges from the romantic to the taboo and from the intimate to
the voyeuristic. With sensitivity,
passion and at times humor, these poems capture the delights of sex, sexuality,
love, lust and fantasy.
Painters and sculptors frequently turn to the human body as
a subject, so that the nude is a commonplace in museums and art galleries. The
artist's interest in the outer form of women and men as aesthetic, biological,
and sexual beings is paralleled by the poet's concern with the body as topic,
and as metaphor (some say the source of all metaphor). As we move from figure
studies to figures of speech, we find the poet employing verbal description of
the body, and its activities, both profound and profane, and perhaps more
significantly, explorations of an interior landscape in which drives and
desires, as well as passion and romance, play no small part. Sensual
perception, musky memory, and sexual imagination all are vital parts of lived
experience, a strange hybrid of that biological imperative that challenges
self-control at every opportunity, and the higher mental and spiritual
functions that elevate love, often beyond all other values and motivations, at
times to the point of mystical experience. And this aspect of life is,
therefore, a theme of great appeal for the poet, who seeks to answer the
question, what does it mean to be human? To err is human, we are told, but it
is no error to say that Eros is especially humanizing, hence the slogan from
the sixties, make love, not war!
As a point of contrast, the art of the pornographer is a transparent one, both
in the obvious aim of excitation and manipulation, but also in that the goal is
to disguise the medium as much as possible, and generate the illusion of a
direct and immediate, that is, unmediated experience. The art of erotic poetry
is quite the opposite, as the poet's purpose is for readers and listeners to
attend to the words themselves, to pay heed to the language, the sound, and the
style that is employed, to find aesthetic pleasure in the composition in and of
itself, an aesthetic pleasure that reflects, rather than just presents or
represents the actual pleasure of human sexuality. In other words, the
gratification offered by the form of erotic poetry mirrors the gratification we
may gain from its content. And so, we may admire the craft that went into the
making of the poem, perhaps even dissect the technique, or we may, at the other
extreme, find ourselves in a Pygmalion-like state of arousal, or a
Narcissus-like state of narcosis. But above all, the erotic mirror that these
poets have fashioned allows us to examine ourselves, our needs and our wants,
our experiences and intentions, our minds and our bodies, in all their beauty,
and in their unattractive aspects as well. In short, the mirror of Eros allows
us to know ourselves, in all of our humanity.
This collection is aptly named, for candy is sweet, but can sometimes cause us
pain, in the form of a bellyache, and sometimes leave us empty, in regard to
calories and cavities alike. Candy is also candid, having the virtue of
honesty, providing forthright appraisals of individuals, relationships, and our
species as a whole (and suggesting that "we must cultivate our garden,"
à la Candide). And most of all, Candy is a treat, one that has been lovingly
crafted by our skilled confectioners, Erin Badough and Dale Winslow, who have
put together this book con (that is, with) affection. As an edited collection,
Candy is the product of collaboration, between the two editors, and among the
thirty-seven poets included in this volume. Moreover, it is only fitting that
this be the first work published by NeoPoiesis Press, itself a collaborative
effort that I am pleased to be a part of, and a partnership that emerged out of
the larger, looser collectivity that is the MySpace poetry community. This book
is just the beginning of a series of publications that will feature a wide
variety of styles, formats, topics and themes. It is just the beginning, and it
is a very, very sweet beginning indeed!
- Lance Strate, author
of Echoes and Reflections
Reviews
" 'Speak to me/use only vowels,' says one poet.
And yes, ecstatic vowels seem to be at the core of this multi-layered candy of
a book. Thankfully though the tongue must make its way through
greatvarieties of deliciousness to get there. A wonderful
celebration of sexual textasy."
-Robert Priestis the author of 15 books of poetry, the most recent
being Reading the Bible Backwards, in addition to being a novelist,
journalist, and songwriter. He co-wrote the number one hit, "Song
Instead of a Kiss," for Alannah Myles, and wrote and performed (as
"Dr. Poetry") thirteen segments for CBC radio's spoken-word show Wordbeat.www.poempainter.com.
"Candy is better than sweet - it's a sensuous
collection of metaphoric, metaphysical, pulsing, pounding, gentle, gossamer
erotic poetry. So why is my favorite title 'There Is Nothing Better
Than Sex in the Kitchen?' " Candy has something for every
taste."
-Paul Levinson, author of 5 novels including The Plot to Save
Socrates, and The Pixel Eye, and 10 nonfiction books, is Professor
of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City.
http://infiniteregress.tv/
"Desire is so necessary but it needs to be ignited.
Images, sounds, all of that work just fine but there's something so sweet
and pure about the written word. There's nothing like an honest
recollection of a longing so palpable it almost seeps and blurs into the paper
it's being printed on.
That's Candy. This compilation of poetry is exactly what I'm
talkin' 'bout. From Neil McCrea's "Learning to Dodge Bullets,"
with its vivid imagery of a surprising encounter with a brave new lover, to the
blatant animal energy of Nicole Ficco's "Doggystyle," Candy is
heated and hardened, sugary foreplay for anybody in need of some
sweetness."
“The poems in CANDY are fresh (in every
sense of the word)tactile explorations of sensual minds, bodies and spaces.
Here readers will find fantasies to match and expand their own. In
an age that hypes the erotic potential
of new media, CANDY is a reminder that language itself remains our principal instrument
of desire.”
-Joseph W. Slade,
author of Pornography in America,
the three volume reference work Pornography
and Sexual Representation, and Thomas
Pynchon(Writers for the 70's series).
