15 June 2004. Recently, a few posts about Joseph Ceravolo and his poetry were posted to New-Poetry. The following excerpt was quoted by someone not in tune with it:

The first two lines of this text appeal strongly to me--even to the point of agreeing with Kenneth Koch, who edited a collection of Ceravolo's work in his introduction to which he discussed this text, that they are profound. Their first four rushed words, for me, bring us the shock of a suddenness of morning, or Beginning. But, oh, not just morning, but "May flower," another consequential Beginning. There's more: the poet confuses the four words so close together that morning-as-May, morning-as-flower, May-as-morning and flower-as-morning are all equally and simultaneously conveyed.

Another "oh"--to the realization that the May flower (and the rest of it) may exist; that is, it may not exist, may be a flower too ethereal to be real--something dreamed, or imagined, instead. In the meantime, the pun brings the potentiality of the month of May into the poem's connotative resources. Finally, there's the possibility that the flower, and the month, and the morning, are built--or, for me, finished. A gift, prepared for us, overnight. In just two short lines, then, a grand surprise is celebrated.

That the lines break grammatical norms underscores surprisedness. It has other virtues: it makes the lines a puzzle. This prevents the reader from taking them in automatically, and therefore uninvolvedly, or close to it. It also gives the reader a chance at the joy of solution (as all good poems do, not just the ones I call burstnorm; a good poem always makes the reader work to understand it). Beyond that, it pushes a reader's cerebral energy up; hence, when he solves the text as a puzzle, he'll have greater means quickly and thoroughly to enjoy whatever it then leads to.

I have trouble with the rest of the excerpt. I take it the poet feels that winter is still present, cooling water, in spite of the flower, and he wants to know when it will stop; soon, happily, is the implication. The water, too, is "built," or made rather than just there. It's falling--as rain? I can't connect either of these facts in an effective way with the beginning of the poem. "Reeds" add to the picture, but I'm not sure how, other than as simply an extra detail. "I am surprised" is a deadening anticlimax. The whole of the text to that point is a hymn to surprise. Hence, my feelings about the text are mixed. I hope soon to see the whole poem it's from. Then I'll be able better to evaluate it.

"Drunken Winter," the complete poem quoted, seems to me a terrific poem, all the way through:

But wait. How does the paddle get into the picture? It has to do with water; that and the geese who soon appear make me finally take the poem's drunkenly-arrived-at or drunkenly-behaving subject to be a pond or other body of water. The geese the boy announces (to correct "your" impression that something seen far off is a flea) are paddling through this body of water's reflections of an oak sky. Actually, the second line could be interpretted, albeit not completely sans strain, to be grammatically stating this, for it speaks of a "cold (that) some wild (or things that are wild) paddle (on or through)." Who knows, though: could be a watery sky. . . . Certainly, a cold wintry landscape is being presented.

It is also a "winter of again," or of archetypal returningness. It's at its best, its high summer or "June"--or in some way hinting of summer. At the same time, it is a "winter of--again--(an) oak sky." Perhaps the geese were a figment of the boy's imagination that the pond or sky unhardened for, but--more closely scrutinized--is without, after all. . . . The facts don't really matter; what matters is the meta-factual vivid impression of winter that comes across if one lets one's perceptions paddle randomly through the poem, if one lets flawed, sometimes inconsistent pictures of the scene form in one's appreciation like never-unbroken, shifting reflections in a pond.

(Note: I keep thinking there's some other poem "Drunken Winter" may be an allusion, or even reply, to, but which I can't place, and is more than likely non-existent. If anyone knows otherwise, please let me know.)