On with the C section of my favorite poets. "I think: where would my / dog be if I had one?" I feel little if any ambivalence toward Joseph Ceravolo. I wish he'd written more, lived longer, were better known. He's a favorite of David Shapiro, of Ron Silliman, of Kenneth Koch, that is, of (at least) three other poets on my list. I originally bought "Spring in this world of poor mutts" --as a teenager, at Serendipity Books in Berkeley -- because it had won the Frank O'Hara Prize, something I would like to win myself, if it still existed.

The technique, the ear, is there, as in Creeley and Williams, but there is none of that extraneous theory-of-the line-break. He doesn't need a theoretical apparatus to write. His poems, in their pristine freshness "make no gestures or appeals outside themselves" (Kenneth Koch).

I need to explore Ceravolo's longer sequences at greater length. Because of my lack of ambivalence I don't have to struggle for years to find out whether I like him or not.