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.
"Collected Poems proves James Wright to be a truly rare and beautiful poet... [It] has the authority that only the best books have; it forces on us the recognition that Wright is among the masters of our day."
Peter S. Stitt
""Possibly the New York School's biggest secret-because the publicity-shy poet died young-is Joseph Ceravolo. His poetry is wonderful, it is distinctive, in some ways it seems anomalous in the New York context.""
David Lehman
""Ceravolo transcends the canon(his) verse is at once classical and fresh, tender and profound, succinct and expansive, tantalizingly parseable yet divinely ineffable. It would take a lifetime of expert reading to fully appreciate this lifetime of superlative writing; with the long-awaited publication of a collected Ceravolo, America's contemporary poetry readers now have the opportunity to do the
