Ian Brown on Joseph Ceravolo's Collected Poems (Part One)

Sitting in TriBeCa, I open my recently received copy of the Joseph Ceravolo Collected Poems. I am here with my beautiful fiancée Danielle who is doing work of her own next to me at the table. Now and again, she pulls at a cup of green tea and, now and again, I do the same. I can feel the caffeine rush more than usual and question if this is the right state of mind to enter into a massive collection of notably dense poetry. I conclude: probably not, but then again, I think, what is the right state of mind to enter into a massive collection of notably dense poetry? Probably none. I wonder. The steam rises in twists from my Michigan State coffee mug and I wonder if it does the same once it’s inside my belly.

I’ve already read the introduction twice. Written by David Lehman, the great champion of American contemporary poetry, I read it once on the subway on my way to a hot yoga class on the upper east side and then again, shamefully, early one morning on the toilet in Bobst library. As I begin it again, I make a note in the left-hand margin, reminding me to only use David’s words as a jumping off point for my own - not to let his introduction complete funnel my review. It reads: *DON’T REWRITE LEHMAN. BE YOUR OWN MAN. However, it’s a difficult task, and my body shakes with anxiety when I hit the end of his very first sentence: “ [Toward an anthology] of unjustly neglected American poets,” Lehman writes, “I was not the only contributor who put in for Joseph Ceravolo, but my hand went up first, and I got to praise this overlooked genius of American poetry.” Fuck, I think, there goes my first line, and I turn to my computer and delete the first sentence in my Text Edit doc. - simply, “Joseph Ceravolo, the unsung genius of American poetry, final gets his due with his newly released (Wesleyan books) Collected Poems, and I am honored to be the first to give it.”

I kiss Danielle and read through David’s introduction again, this time taking notes on some of the key points he brings up in Ceravolo’s work. In my black Moleskin I write down a few bullet points, completely realizing how in-over-my-head I am by trying to write intelligently on poems of this magnitude. Secretly I think, no one should ever write criticism on art this great - art this great should simply be read by everyone alive in the solitude of their days, over and over again, and thus, become woven into the fabric of their cognitive experience by instinctively recalling the poems and then applying them into their daily actions... still, I jotted down some notes:

- Line Breaks - Duality of the line - wordplay - materialization of language - creation of new nouns and, in turn, new experience - imaginative capacity- stark but complex images achieved through few words - conceptual ideas’ ability to open up into larger and more complex mental spaces and, as a result, shoot the mind off into new, interesting rooms.

Transmigration Solo: I read the preface written by Joseph himself in 1978. He states in the end that in the collection, he has created “a brewing of diverse particles into the whole.” With this in mind, I venture onward to poem number one (Lost Words) with the aim of reading the entire Collected in perhaps a single sitting. Yet, to my chagrin, I spend over a half-hour with this poem. “One corner is enough. / There isn’t one / as the field bulbs go out. / Right nearby is a river. / Moon exhaustedness slow (BIG) / slides lawns of earth under.”

My mind goes wild during and after reading the poem. I struggle to make any immediate sense of the three stanzas I’ve just taken in, outside of the traditional “letting the language wash over you” technique that seems so en vogue and acceptable with so many of us. With still over 500 pages to tackle, I refuse not to  give each singular poem its due. I read the poem over at least three more times. I break it down. I think of the interchangeable boxes and rooms we as creatures have no choice but to occupy and the walls that potentially define them - the moon (wall one), the ground (wall two), the river (wall three), Sunday (wall four).

I’m proud of my reading, and so I read the poem out loud to Danielle. She is struck by the same notion and comments on a line in the final stanza, “There’s not enough words left, / although it seems enough / like grass inside me: / where the moment / is a terminable river / and bush come home.” She is curious about the representation of space inside the physical body and how it is so similarly held and represented to the space outside the physical body. I agree, and she kisses my neck all the way up to my earlobe.

For the next few hours I read straight through, giving each poem the respect of at least a moment’s contemplation to collect what I have gained from having read it. I read all the way through INRI, arguably my favorite of Ceravolo’s books, and stop to gather my thoughts on the whole. I don’t know what to do next. Next to me, Danielle is still occupied with her studies. I like how the lamp hanging overhead seems to catch inside her red-green-blue diamond-like earrings. I think about Joseph and all the poems in his books that were dedicated to his wife Rosemary. I’m struck at how beautiful a thing it is to be a poet in love and how lucky the world is to have known Joseph Ceravolo in love. I reread a poem from Spring in this World of Poor Mutts and marvel at his ability and bravery to end a poem as he does here:

Pregnant, I Come

I come to you
with the semen
and the babies:
ropes of the born.

I rise up
as you go up
in your consciousness.
Are you unhappy
in the source?

The clouds sputter
across the ring.
Do the birds sing?

Is the baby singing in you? Yet

-- Ian Brown
(The second part of this piece will be posted tomorrow.)

Comments

[B.C.]

Before you go ahead and say, "that bastard can't even respond with his real name! What a coward," you'll note that said bastard might be someone you know who feels too badly to say this to your face. But, someone's got to do it, no?

1. Masturbating someone is really tacky. It's just too close to home to say your professor is the champion of contemporary American poetry. OK. Like, we get it.

2. Also, this is really poorly written. Come on man. Don't make the MFA we paid for look so easy to attain? Isn't there some level of craft or at least originality behind good writing? (I'm sitting with a cup of whatever, in this cafe/bar/whatever) WITH a fiancee no less, who you're kissing, and describing as beautiful. Has no place in this blog post. When blogs are written well, their content is informative and the narrative, even personal, can pull a reader in. But when your personal touches make us (US) want to barf, it's just painful. We feel a little shamed for you from afar.

Good ideas. Nice job getting this on the "BEST" American Poetry blog. Really, we could tell it's also sincere and it's heartfelt. It's just a tad too high-school kid writing for his college newspaper and not enough Human-Attaining-Masters Degree with unique things to say. Meh?

[Stephanie]

Ian, I love this passage: "Secretly I think, no one should ever write criticism on art this great - art this great should simply be read by everyone alive in the solitude of their days, over and over again, and thus, become woven into the fabric of their cognitive experience by instinctively recalling the poems and then applying them into their daily actions."

[Rick Peters]

I say if you know the person, you should say it, whatever it is, to his face. It would be less hurtful. Maybe the piece started slowly and could have gotten more quickly to Ceravolo. The fact that BC does not mention Ceravolo at all makes me wonder about the motives and the sincerity of the comment. Does BC stand for Big Coward after all?

[DL]

Tiger, the lines I like the best are these:
<<<
I think about Joseph and all the poems in his books that were dedicated to his wife Rosemary. I’m struck at how beautiful a thing it is to be a poet in love and how lucky the world is to have known Joseph Ceravolo in love.
>>>
Also,
<<<
For the next few hours I read straight through, giving each poem the respect of at least a moment’s contemplation to collect what I have gained from having read it.
>>>
Your unkind critic grudgingly acknowledges your writing is "sincere" and "heartfelt." Yes, and a lot of readers will be charmed by the things that piss off BC.
Like Rick Peters, I wish the conversation would get back to Ceravolo. -- DL

[David Weisberg]

Excellent post, Ian. IT IS refreshing to read a piece so conscious of the insurmountable difficulty in saying something intelligent about such a daunting literary treasure. This post reflects not only on the work of Ceravalo but on the act and process of experiencing and thinking about poems. THIS IS IMPORTANT TO THINK ABOUT SO THANK YOU. Looking forward to part 2.

To "BC", who posted the unkind comment: YOU should be chided for your inability (with your own "MFA degree", or whatever) to write something biting that doesn't so obviously reflect your own feelings of jealousy and inadequacy. You are a silly human being.

[Sean]

Ian - the passage that the earlier commenter Stephanie highlighted from your review really is an exceptional one - "...art this great should simply be read by everyone alive," you write, "in the solitude of their days, over and over again, and thus, become woven into the fabric of their cognitive experience by instinctively recalling the poems and then applying them into their daily actions." Reading that and thinking about it, I couldn't help but recall a passage from Emerson I've recently stumbled across: "He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth." Certainly I think this is a good way to approach poetry (and clearly this is how you approached Ceravolo) - there are moments we encounter in great poetry that really resonate within us - and these are things which come to penetrate our actions before we are able to even begin to "apprehend [them] as truth;" so profound & tangible is their existence to us that we can intuit their values and implement them into our lives before we can ever discuss their truth critically, or in terms that make sense outside of ourselves.

I found it thus very fitting that you chose to utilize moments of autobiography in the discussion of your experience with Ceravolo's work - there are things in his poems which you've begun to "act as your life," I feel. An earlier, more controversial commenter on this site wrote, "When blogs are written well, their content is informative and the narrative, even personal, can pull a reader in" - and on that point I certainly agree with that commenter - However, I, unlike that commenter, found your article/review/snippet to be a wonderful example of something that utilizes an individual's (your) historical interaction with a work to effectively draw the reader in.

Anyway, I'm excited to read the second part of your commentary - I hope you can point us toward a few more particular poems of his that you find particularly moving & poignant.

[Carl]

I don't want to turn this thread into a warzone, but honestly I agree with the first comment made by "BC". Though I'm not sure it is best to be anonymous, I really think he or she made some astute points, particularly about the intellectual masturbation going on in this post. I think the "red-gree-blue diamond-like earring" was where I really had to chuckle out loud. Good one, young man. You're in love. That's wonderful. But for god's sake try to sharpen your writing skills before you send this blather out into the world.

[A.F.C]

Please note that when the anonymous blogger wrote another post, it was deleted three times. Not sure if this was because we mentioned Lehman or the idea of bad writing, but, come on.

[Stacey Harwood]

A.F.C. Your comments landed in the blog's spam folder because of their length. I'm the managing editor and I did not delete them. You might want to try again but this time be brief. And before posting, consider editing for grammar, style, sentence structure, word choices, and punctuation.
Stacey Harwood

[Rick Peters]

"I don't want to turn this thread into a warzone, but honestly . . ." Anyone beginning a comment with this patently insincere rhetorical formula has no business lecturing anybody else on good writing.

[steve]

wow things are lively on this blog post. people are going crazy over nothing it seems. good poet, mediocre post at best. thats my 2 cents

[DL]

Criticism can be practiced nobly and honestly. Criticism today is often dismaying because the insults are gratuitous, the name-calling is obnoxious, and ad hominem attacks are the norm. Here we have a young poet, Ian Brown, writing with genuine enthusiasm about the love affair he is having with the poetry of Joseph Ceravolo. As he happens to be head over heels in love with a woman, he chooses a first-person autobiographical stance to frame his remarks. Does this work? We know he is earnest. Does he help us to understand Ceravolo? Is the narrative distracting? These are legitimate questions and can surely be raised and discussed without rancor. The obsessive use of masturbation ("self-abuse") as a term of abuse is, to my mind, totally out of line, though possibly fun to deconstruct in a class on rhetoric and polemic.

[B.C.]

Thank you, Stacey. We're on an iPhone. We're not writing papers today. We're glad that people responded positively to your being aware of how daunting it is to write critically about major work. But, when you sit down and think, 'I think I'll write this blog like this' (and expect people to read it) you could have, at the very least, tried to find some voice that doesn't alienate your readers. Don't be so sappy. Be interesting. Why, why, why make us readers literally quiver with embarrassment for you? It actually made us phone one another and laugh. That sounds harsh, but in reality, we just couldn't get to the place where we could tell you to your face. Maybe that's our fault. Sorry. The term "coward" can easily be thrown around, sure, and we get it.

But readers, we ask you: would you sign your name to this?

Ian's a capable, smart, thoughtful, kind, intelligent person. Of course you will be defensive. But, it's also OK to criticize when things are done poorly. We don't expect you to admit it, especially when you buy Lehman's books and take his classes, but when blogs are filled with 'roses are red' cheese and some gratuitous masturbation of a professor, it's just really sort of incestuous and juvenile.

We ask the folks who run this blog to reassess the
content, to not accept any old poem folded and passed via drunken times at Loup Cafe. Rediscover quality.

Sincerely,
it's OK if you call us cowardly.

[B.C.]

We agree he is earnest. We agree, and well said, DL.

[Ian Brown]

Whoa now. Everybody just chill out. It's a BEAUTIFUL book. You should all go out and read it. That's all I'm sayin'.

also, happy Valentine's day honey boo boo (Danielle). I love you.

- Tiger Brown