cover art by Clarisse Provido
“This book is not just a sensory feast, it’s a whole literary event—each poem full of candor and heart. It arrives dressed and dripping for a stunning, most spectacular debut!”
—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of Night Owl, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, and Miracle Fruit
“Ina Cariño’s Feast is an astonishing book of poems and a stunning debut. Ravishing in its linguistic dexterity and imagistic layering, this book makes me realize how rare it is to read poems this fully embodied. How is any body meant to live in a world this brutal? And yet. How can we not reach towards its indescribable beauty and sustenance? In this book the body is broken and the body is nourished in equal measure. ‘I knew that much—that breaking can mean release.’ Held in the unrelenting clutches of historical and intimate violence, the urge towards personal and communal liberation is a formal and emotional imperative. I’m so excited for this book and this poet to usher us through such a timely and necessary portal.”
—Gabrielle Calvocoressi, author of The New Economy and Rocket Fantastic
“‘To be other is to read badly-/drawn maps,’ writes Ina Cariño, ‘to hum / with a revolutionary's love song.’ I love the vividness of these poems, the language of the senses that's so alive on each page of Feast. But these poems aren’t just beautiful, sensual lyrics. There is more at stake here. Cariño is the kind of poet who claims family and identity with style that’s akin to spell-making. ‘I dream in a tongue not my own’ the poet says—and we see it instantly: Here, even a simple act of cooking rice can become a ceremony, a rhapsody of liberation. All of this is done not with literary pretension but with vulnerability and honesty. If Ina Cariño says ‘names are spells,’ it is because this poet aims to write actual spells, and not just with the pen, but with breath: ‘I am the last spell, the only song left. deliberate utterance of bone’. Here, we are in presence of something special, I think. Bravo.”
—Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa
“…a lushly beautiful collection that follows a world populated by mothers and daughters, the food and plants that connect them, and their Filipinx culture and language.”
—Angela María Spring, Washington Independent Review of Books
“This astounding collection reminds me how often, our bodies sense these histories and traumas before our minds even begin processing.”
—Dorothy Chan, from “7 Poetry Collections by Asian American Writers that Define Heart and the Infinite Volta” (Electric Literature)
