Collected Poems

by Joseph Ceravolo

Like an underground river, the astonishing poems of Joseph Ceravolo have nurtured American poetry for fifty years, a presence deeply felt but largely invisible. Collected Poems offers the first full portrait of Ceravolo’s aesthetic trajectory, bringing to light the highly original voice that was operating at an increasing remove from the currents of the time. From a poetics associated with Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery to an ever more contemplative, deeply visionary poetics similar in sensibility to Zen and Dante, William Blake and St. John of the Cross, this collection shows how Ceravolo’s poetry takes on a direct, quiet lyricism: intensely dedicated to the natural and spiritual life of the individual. As Ron Silliman notes, Ceravolo’s later work reveals him to be “one of the most emotionally open, vulnerable and self-knowing poets of his generation.” Many new pieces, including the masterful long poem “The Hellgate,” are published here for the first time. This volume is a landmark edition for American poetry, and includes an introduction by David Lehman.

-Wesleyan University Press

Genres: Poetry

500 pages, Hardcover

First published January 23, 2012

About the author

A poet sometimes associated with the New York School of poets, Joseph Ceravolo began writing poems in 1957 while completing his Army service in Germany. In 1959, Ceravolo earned a degree in civil engineering from the City College of New York and enrolled in Kenneth Koch’s poetry workshop at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan.

The New York–born son of Italian immigrants, Ceravolo died at age 54 after publishing several books, establishing a career as a hydraulics engineer, and raising a family in New Jersey. His 1968 collection, Spring in This World of Poor Mutts, was published by Columbia University Press and won the first Frank O’Hara Award for poetry—“intended to encourage the writing of good new experimental poetry.”

Ceravolo’s other publications include Fits of Dawn, published in 1965 by close friend Ted Berrigan’s C Press; The Green Lake Is Awake (1994), with poems selected by Larry Fagin, Kenneth Koch, Charles North, Ron Padgett, David Shapiro, and Paul Violi; INRI, (1979); Millennium Dust (1982), which includes poems later anthologized in The Poets of the New York School; Transmigration Solo (1979); and Wild Flowers Out of Gas (1967).

Reviews

[Tatyana · Rating 4 out of 5]

You’ve held me in descending,
being next to me
giving strength to feel
the vine that you extend
— “Thanksgiving Day”

"You are still hidden
under my eyelids
and in the sun you are sun,
in the reaches you are particles,
in the void you are no thing.
I can’t dream anymore
for in that dissolution absorbed
is you. I can’t dream anymore. "
—from “Real″ ( November 18, 1985 )

"You to me
Me to you
me knowing
me not knowing
O minor flowers
O major towers
It’s sunny warm inflamed
in the pain
of this touch like
a sword of showers.
Hand to mouth
mouth to hand
from the cortex to the corpse
me not knowing
me knowing
All the sufferin’
in this touch"
— “Reggae Mine” ( March 7, 1985 )

"Don’t say soul
when you mean body"
— from “Morning vespers”

"Being with you
I am a seagull alone
and flying although the clouds
are within."
— from “The Rocket”

"I hold her hand held
swollen with dreams.
Passing a soul through the hand."
—from “Sleeping by the rocks”

"‘Du bist in meinen Blut’
This phrase came to me
over and over
You are in my blood
This phrase
in meinen Blut
like a god was there
flowing forever
‘Du bist in meinen Blut’
surging in me
forever and ever
siempre en mi sangre
‘Du bist in meinen Blut’
in my blood, through my frame
to my central flame.
— "‘Du bist in meinen Blut’", March 5, 1985

"My intellect seems to breathe.
I can’t separate
what I see. Like a seed
it flies with the birds, like fate,
invading yet settling
on the nerves of my mind."
— from “A piece of glass″ (December 23, 1984)

"I kneel at your body overtowering,
kiss your lips overpowering. "
— from “Lament″ (December 11, 1984)

[H · Rating 5 out of 5]

<3

[alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible work.

[Tony Iantosca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Side by side in Manhattan.