Anthony Carelli was raised in Poynette, Wisconsin. He holds a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and an M.F.A. from New York University. His poems have appeared in various magazines including The New Yorker, Columbia, and Commonweal, and on various websites including theparisreview.org, AGNI online, and Memorious. His first book, Carnations (Princeton University Press, 2011) was a finalist for the 2011 Levis Reading Prize. The recipient of a Hodder fellowship and a Whiting Award in Poetry, he lives in Brooklyn, New York and teaches at New York University.
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CarnationsPoemsFrom"Birthday"
Kenosha is hideous behind us, cloaked by this cloud that hangs
On the pigeons flushed out: the last exhalation of the auto assembly.
We wait at the base of the docks, and talk about the White Sox,
Not the Roman Empire. My father and I stare right at it, but talk baseball.
Carnations:Poetry -
CarnationsPoemsFrom"Yahweh"
“Use fresh words,” I was told, “and speak clearly.”
Then my masters insisted, “All of poetry
Has but two subjects,” one of which was love.
The other, though equally impressive,
I can never recall. There was love
And then the other thing. “Neither of which, boy,”
I was warned, “should we mention explicitly.”
Carnations:Poetry -
CarnationsPoemsFrom"No, Euripides"
“No, Euripides.
Not again.
No more.
Don’t let another god appear
in the theater.
It’s so disappointing.
When the gods are called, and they come
and prance around like the bodies of men,
they’re ruined for me.
Let them be wonderful,
not pigeons in sunlight,
nor the dumb sea confusing Ithacan sailors.
Stop pestering those strange creatures.
We may find someday
we need them.”
Carnations:Poetry
"There is no poem entitled Carnations in Carelli's first collection. But affection is its master mood, the affection of a vital young man for the world of his experience . . . They're real experiences, conducive to mixed feelings, yet Carelli writes of them in language so enlivening and fresh that they become blessings, which may be why most of the poems have churchly and theological titles." —Ray Olson, Booklist
"I picked up Anthony Carelli's Carnations, a first collection, not expecting to linger but curious, not least because Princeton's outstanding contemporary poets series, edited by Paul Muldoon, is reliably unpredictable. And as soon as I had started, I was charmed . . . He is able to write in a way that allows for the sublime and the absurd to come together. But Carelli's free-flowering humour never distracts from his purpose and the ending is masterly." —The Observer (Poetry Book of the Month)
"Readers may fervently wish that this promisingly talented writer never quits his day job, as warming student egos in classrooms might possibly prove less inspirational than pies in Brooklyn." —Benjamin Ivry, Newark Star-Ledger [on Carnations]
"Carnations pays homage to the poet's masters and ushers in an exciting new talent . . . [T]his wonderful collection is as good a guide as they get." —Piotr Florczyk, On the Seawall blog
Selected Works
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Carelli’s poems are devoutly secular, taking many of their metaphors from the sacred realm of saints and prophets, and allowing that flicker of faith to animate the world of supermarkets and window factories and chicken pot pies—the only world we can, finally, be certain of. They make the quotidian shimmer with divinity. These are poems that manage to strike a balance between the expansive impulse and meticulous precision, between the meditative mode and ecstatic proclamation. And in straddling those divides, they enact, in line after line, small miracles.