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 creates the ambient soundtrack of history and the seemingly apocalyptic present. Silence in the sense both of the void's innate quietude and of the failure to speak-of people either dumbstruck or in denial, not speaking because they cannot or will not. Throughout this collection, these sounds and intermittent silences provide the rhythm for poems that question 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.
"Albergotti crafts astute and thoughtful meditations on the imperfectness of life, language, and time, while skillfully displaying his natural ability to breathe new energy into established forms, including the sonnet and the abecedarian."
January Gill O'Neil
"Albergotti is one of the best practitioners of the most musical branch of contemporary poetry. His poems always rely heavily on, and use to the fullest advantage, a musician's ear for the phrase, the line, the stanza, and the close. This is the most accomplished book yet by one of my favorite poets to read."
Chad Davidson
"Candy is a jawbreaker: impossible to swallow but a pleasure to savor. In its layers are the flavors of Pope, Keats, Frost, Sagan, Joy Division's Ian Curtis, but it is Dan Albergotti's astonishing formal acumen, wit, and engagement with sound that make his examination of mortality and the complexities of forgiveness so sweet."
