The Green Lake Is Awake: Selected Poems

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.

Publication date: June 1, 1994

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 6 x 9

Page count: 150 pages

ISBN: 9781566890212

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.

“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.”

—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

“Ceravolo is a refined and refining fire, and his wonderful structures were built to last.”

—David Shapiro