Synkroniciti is delighted to welcome poet Carol Kanter of Chicago with Heritage, a meditation on the flavors and recipes that tether us to childhood and to the ancestors who fed us with more than food. Her grandmother’s candied carrots linger in memory—an aroma rising from the past, carrying expectation, desire, and the intimate choreography of a kitchen where love was measured in sweetness.
She remains under the spell of “a flame/ so gentle a kitchen spy/ might sneeze it out,/ upset the delicate, split-/ second timing of her “easy/ as falling off a log” magic/ that left family taste/ buds coated by sweet roots.”
This mischievous image captures both the delicacy of candy‑making and the familial playfulness surrounding it. The moment is tender, thrilling, and utterly human. Carol’s alliteration, soft humor, and sensory imagery recreate the spell of watching magic happen on a stove, leaving our own taste buds tingling with remembered delight.
Read “Heritage” in Synkroniciti’s Expectations, Vol. 8, No. 2, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Carol Kanter describes her poetry as “accessible.” Her subjects: anything— nature, art, mundane happenings and encounters.
Carol’s poetry has appeared in over 100 literary journals and anthologies, plus three chapbooks: Out of Southern Africa, and Chronicle of Dog (Finishing Line Press); Of Water (Peterborough Poetry Project).
Carol and her photographer husband paired poems and travel photographs in four coffee-table type books. No Secret Where Elephants Walk, from east and south Africa; Where the Sacred Dwells, Namaste, from India, Nepal and Bhutan; Where Forest Temples Whisper, from SE Asia; Where the Road Comes Up to Meet You from non-safari Africa and South America. (See http://www.DualArtsPress.com.)
Carol is a psychotherapist in private practice. Her book And Baby Makes Three (2007) explores the emotional transitions to parenthood.