The Green Lake Is Awake

Published in 1994, 
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, the 131 page 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,  Art 
and Literature magazine.

"I knew Joseph Ceravolo and his poems for twenty-five years.  He would 
send me a poem like "How Weather Feels the Cotton Hotels," and, every 
time, I'd gasp.  It was wonderful and I didn't know how he had done it.  
It faded like the mirage of a gorgeous building; then, as soon as I 
reread it, it was there again.  What was Ceravolo doing?  Whatever it 
was, somehow in four lines he brought me intense, clear feelings of wasps 
on earthenware, of nights, of feelings wasps must have, that clay pots 
must have.  A new-or, rather, old but unlighted-part of my experience was 
given light.  His poems were a sort of amazing perceptual archeology."

                                                  -Kenneth Koch*
                                  

Click here to view the front cover (35k) of the book.

Sample poems from The Green Lake Is Awake.

Click here to view the back cover (57k) of the book.

* Extracted from the introduction of The Green Lake Is Awake