Poet Kara Candito
has been described as “a sure, authoritative voice,” “ferociously witty
and intensely lyrical.” Winner of the 2008 Prairie Schooner Book Prize,
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.
Her first book, Taste the Cherry, is filled with poems “poised
and raw, hard-knuckled and siren-sweet.” Here, she speaks about the
writing life, the academic life, and the life of a poet having published
what Stephen Dunn calls “a remarkable first collection.”
You have been called “a poetic voice born to our landscape fully formed.” In fact, from your bio, it looks as though you may be one of the few who checked “poet” in the what is your dream career? box in high school and never looked back. How long have you been writing and when did you know you wanted to do this for a living?
I started writing poetry when I was ten. Every year, the fifth graders
at my elementary school made a holiday section for the local newspaper. I
wrote a silly Christmas poem with underlined words and a corresponding
word search. I remember spending hours on the line-breaks, though at the
time I had no idea what they were called.
I was lucky to
attend a small liberal arts college with a very supportive creative
writing department. Working with Jane Satterfield and Lia Purpura, who
are both amazing writers, really affirmed my desire to pursue poetry as a
craft.
Can you
talk about your progress from undergrad, to grad, to doctoral studies?
How do you feel academia has influenced/ furthered your
writing/publishing?
In college, I
majored in creative writing and philosophy. I’ve always been a bit of a
nerd, so I really enjoy literature and literary theory. I did my MFA at
University of Maryland, which has a strong literature program.
Sometimes, I think that academic courses have influenced my work more
than writing workshops, which is strange to me because many of my
friends who are poets don’t feel that academics have had a significant
influence on their writing. At Florida State University, where I’m
finishing my PhD in English/Creative Writing, I chose to minor in
literary theory. I’ve found that theory gives me a language for talking
about poetry. Teaching has given me the chance to personalize this
language and to cultivate my own set of values as a poet. As far as
publishing goes, I think that being in academia has allowed me to work
with other poets and learn from their experiences. I definitely don’t
think that academia is the only career for a poet. In fact, some of my
favorite contemporary poets are carpenters, clothing store managers, or
social workers. I guess that academia fulfills my mania for dissection,
which is an important element in my poetry, so it feels like a healthy
relationship.
Are you
involved in the literary community outside of academia? If so, in what
ways, and how does this further your goals as a poet?
When I lived in
New York City and worked in the publishing industry, I enrolled in
poetry workshops at the Writer’s House and the 92nd St. Y. It was great
to meet other writers who weren’t academics, and to discover how and why
so many people arrive at poetry. I’ve also attended the Bread Loaf
Writers Conference as a writer and a scholar. Meeting other emerging
writers and talking obsessively about poetry and fiction for eleven days
was incredibly inspirational. I also got the chance to hear some of my
poetry crushes read. Brigit Peegen Kelly’s reading was so magical that
it made half of the poets in the audience cry.
Your first poetry book, Taste of Cherry,
was recently released. Can you speak about the experience of having
your first book published? Do you remember the moment you held the
final, finished copy in your hands? Who did you give the first copy to?
The whole
experience has been really surreal. One afternoon in early August, I
came home to discover a box from University of Nebraska Press sitting on
my doormat. For some reason, I grabbed the box and dumped it in my
closet, where my partner wouldn’t see it. It took two or three days for
me to actually open the box, and another day for me to open a copy of
the book and start reading. It’s strange and thrilling to see something
that had been so private for so long “out in the world,” though it’s
taken a while to get used to it. I was going to give the first copy to
my professor, Erin Belieu, whose insight really helped to shape the
book, but the press had already sent her a copy, so I gave it to two of
my friends at FSU, who are married and both poets!
According
to the “Events” listing on your website, you have quite a busy schedule!
From Florida to Massachusetts, back to Florida, then off to Maryland.
How do you balance a book tour, writing and teaching?
A lot of poets
have told me that readings are the best way to introduce and promote
your work. Aside from teaching, I’ve always been afraid of public
speaking, so I wasn’t looking forward to doing so many readings, though
I’ve been getting over my phobia and learning to enjoy them. It’s really
a privilege to be able to present your poems the way that you hear them
in your head. Balancing traveling for readings with teaching, writing
and looking for a job has been a challenge, though travel is definitely a
stimulant for my writing. I love walking around new cities or
revisiting places where I’ve lived. People-watching in airports is
definitely one of my favorite sports.
Your poems
offer a variety of images and settings, from the edge of the Great
Pacific Garbage Patch to the hills of Oaxaca to a VH1 Best Power Ballads
Countdown and a month-long David Lynch film marathon. How does
pop-culture inform your work? What would you say is the greatest
influence on your work?
I don’t think many
contemporary poets can write outside of pop culture. I definitely don’t
feel like I’ve been given a choice in the matter. I’m also obsessed
with anything that has to do with excess, and pop culture is a perpetual
goldmine of human indulgence.
When I read about
the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, I was floored. In the time it took to
read an article, I went from envisioning the ocean as a vast, final
frontier to picturing a gigantic mass of plastic soup churning in the
Pacific Ocean. Our relationship with the planet seems stuck in the
perpetual infatuation stage of a love affair, when it’s all about
consuming someone until that sense of wonder and newness is ruined.
Hence, the tragic mess we’ve made of Earth.
David Lynch’s
films have been generative for me as a writer because he gets at
something dark and primal about the way we experience the world by
manipulating our visual understanding of reality. I can only hope to
achieve this kind of defamiliarization through poetic language.
I definitely identify with poets like Frank O’Hara, who cast a wide net of associations in their work.
In your daily life, where might you find a poem?
In an overheard
conversation, or a strange image. Last summer, I saw an eight-foot
wooden cross fastened to the back of a tow truck on I-10. I’m still
trying to write that poem.
Could you
give us a glimpse of your writing process? When is a poem finished? How
do you polish your language to get such gorgeous lines as
…Maybe this is no place for ceremony.
Maybe this is the only place for it—here, where everything
we waste aches with phantom music, the sexual squeals
of toothless eels writhing beneath the waves.
I usually write
three or four drafts for me to discover the real subject of a poem. From
that point, it takes me anywhere from two to thirty more drafts to find
the musical pulse of a poem. At University of Maryland, I worked with
Stan Plumly, who taught us to value musicality above all else in poetry.
Once the rhythm of a poem emerges, the content seems to follow and then
it’s a matter of making the whole thing feel inevitable. I don’t know
if I ever feel that a poem is finished. I’m always moving things around
and adding and subtracting. When I was revising the poems in Taste of Cherry,
I’d wake up in the middle of the night and realize that I’d been
revising a poem in my dream. It was really maddening. When I’m going
through an intense period of writing, I definitely don’t have the power
to turn off the poetry machine.
Who are your major poetic influences?
Federico García
Lorca, Hart Crane, Frank O’Hara, Larry Levis, Lynda Hull, and Anne
Carson have had the biggest impact on my approach to poetry.
What poets are you currently reading?
Mark Bibbins’, The Dance of No Hard Feelings, Myronn Hardy’s Approaching the Center and Olena Kalytiak Davis’ On the Kitchen Table From Which Everything Has Been Hastily Removed.
Final
Question… What are your plans for the future? What comes after the PhD?
What comes after the 1st book? Better yet, when can we expect the 2nd
book?
I wish I knew for
sure! Right now, I’m in the process of applying to visiting writer and
teaching positions at colleges and universities. Luckily, I started
working on the poems in my second collection before Taste of Cherry was
accepted for publication, so the manuscript began to take shape before
all of the static of publication and reviews. One of my mentors told me
that positive reviews can be just as debilitating as negative reviews,
because they make you want to fall back on the same poetic strategies,
rather than discovering fresh ones to suit your new concerns as a
writer. I think that’s sound advice. My next collection explores the
interconnectedness of identity and myth. These poems inhabit a wider
range of voices, from Lorca, to a Roman emperor’s eunuch, to Babar the
elephant, though the tone is still intense. I’ve finally realized that
I’m incapable of writing “quiet” poems! Hopefully, I’ll have a revised
version of the second manuscript ready next spring.
Taste of Cherry is available directly from University of Nebraska Press and from Amazon.
***
Jill Crammond Wickham is a poet and artist in Upstate New York. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, Weave, Naugatuck River Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, Blue Fifth (broadside), and others. A senior contributor/ columnist for the online poetry community Read Write Poem, she also serves as an editor of the journal Ouroboros. Visit her blog.
