Poetry by Joseph Ceravolo

June 1, 1994 • 6 x 9 • 150 pages • 978-1-56689-021-2

The Green Lake Is Awake is a compilation of selected poems by Joseph Ceravolo. Edited by Larry Fagin, Kenneth Koch, Charles North, Ron Padgett, David Shapiro, and Paul Violi, this book includes works which initially appeared in Fits of Dawn, Wild Flowers Out of Gas, Spring in This World of Poor Mutts, Transmigration Solo, Millennium Dust, An Anthology of New York Poets, Locus Solus magazine, and Art and Literature magazine. This is the first major book in over twenty-five years to make Ceravolo’s work widely available.

About the Author

The first recipient of the Frank O’Hara Award for Poetry, Joseph Ceravolo created several astonishing collections of poetry before his early death. Born in New York, he earned his living as a hydraulics engineer. The Green Lake is Awake is the first major book in over twenty-five years to make Ceravolo’s work widely available.

Reviews

“No one writes like Ceravolo: his magical combinations of fragmentation and lyric—sometimes heartbreaking—immediacy. He is one of those pure poets who make you want to sit down and write a thousand poems and simultaneously make you feel nothing you’ve done or will ever do is good enough. His importance to American poetry over the past 30 years is still largely a secret.” —Charles North

“This book will be a wonderful surprise for readers new to Ceravolo’s work and an opportunity for his old fans to see how really great he is.” —Ron Padgett

“One of the great true experiences of twentieth-century poetry.” —Kenneth Koch

“Joseph Ceravolo once told me that he wanted to found a school called Everyday Life and it would have courses on the seasons. His extreme cubist poetry has become this school, where he shows the relations between grammar and love. . . . He is a refined and refining fire, and his wonderful structures were built to last.” —David Shapiro