Joseph Ceravolo Poetry

Joseph Ceravolo was born April 22, 1934 in Astoria, Queens, New York City, the first son of immigrant Italian parents from the town of tailors, Soriano, in Calabria, Italy. His father, John, was a custom tailor for Saks Fifth Avenue and his mother, Millie, was a factory seamstress. Millie died of cancer in 1957 at the age of 51.

Joseph's only sibling was his younger by 2 years brother, John, Jr. or "Mingo," who was an accomplished classical pianist and died in 1986 at the age of 49. Their father died at the age of 93 on June 16, 1988. Joseph died suddenly on September 4, 1988, three months after his aged father, of an inoperable tumor on his bile duct.

I am Rosemary, Joe's wife for 28 years and the mother of his three children, two sons, Paul and James, and a daughter, Anita. I met Joe in 1959, when he had just graduated City College with a degree in Civil Engineering and was taking a Poetry Workshop taught by Kenneth Koch at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan. Joe began writing poetry in 1957, soon after his mother died, while stationed in Germany for the US Army. He wrote his first poems when he was assigned to all-night Guard Duty in a stockade tower somewhere in the German Alps.

Poetry was Joe's primary love. He lived and he died for poetry. Nothing else mattered as much to his sensibilities as a human being on this earth. Read him and weep. Read him and rejoice. He's here eternally.

-Rosemary Ceravolo