Joe Cardarelli (1944–1994) was a poet, painter, graduate of the

Johns Hopkins Johns Hopkins (May 19, 1795 – December 24, 1873) was an American merchant, investor, and philanthropist. Born on a plantation, he left his home to start a career at the age of 17, and settled in Baltimore, Maryland where he remained for most ...

Writing Seminars, and teacher of writing at the Maryland Institute College of Art for 27 years. Cardarelli pushed generations of MICA artists to incorporate writing into their creative repertoire, and regularly collaborated with his faculty colleagues on projects and performances. He is noted for establishing poetry series such as the Black Mountain poets, St. Valentine’s Day Poetry Marathon, and the Spectrum of Poetic Fire at MICA. In its 25th year, the Spectrum of Poetic Fire reading series still brings quality poets to MICA’s campus for readings during the academic year. In his “Black Mountain Poets” series in 1983/84 he gathered material for a documentary video, Black Mountain Revisited — a historically invaluable collage of interviews and readings given by Robert Duncan,

Robert Creeley Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. He was close with Char ...

Edward Dorn Edward Merton Dorn (April 2, 1929 – December 10, 1999, aged 70) was an American poet and teacher often associated with the Black Mountain poets. His most famous work is '' ''Gunslinger'. Overview Dorn was born in Villa Grove, Illinois. ...

, Joel Oppenheimer, and Jonathan Williams — in the case of Duncan and Oppenheimer, some of their last readings on record. Over the years, Allen Ginsberg,

Amiri Baraka Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous bo ...

Ted Berrigan Ted Berrigan (November 15, 1934 – July 4, 1983) was an American poet. Early life Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. After high school, he spent a year at Providence College before joining the U.S. Army. After ...

, Alice Notley, Anne Waldman, Maureen Owen, Ed Sanders, and many other representative writers of The New American Poetry were frequent visitors to the Institute — thanks to Joe Cardarelli. Known as the “Godfather of

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was d ...

Poetry,” he died at the age of 50 in 1994. A poem that Joe contributed to

Andrei Codrescu Andrei Codrescu (; born December 20, 1946) is a Romanian-born American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and commentator for National Public Radio. He is the winner of the Peabody Award for his film ''Road Scholar'' and the Ovid Prize for p ...

’s and Laura Rosenthal’s anthology ''American Poets Say Goodbye to the Twentieth Century'' (New York, 4 Walls 8 Windows, 1996) ends with the following lines: It’s too bad sometimes I think too bad we can’t see the air too bad the air’s invisible too bad the air’s not clearly there say as it is with just a little smoke we’d find ourselves new eyes taken up by the shapes of air tides the multi-layered, striated, tunneled twisted rolling wave shaped moving patterns the air makes no more or less substantial than one hundred or thousand years.

Publications

* ''Phantom Pod'', (Hollo, Joe Cardarelli, and Kirby Malone. Baltimore: Pod Books, 1977.) * ''The Maine Book – Selected Poems'' * ''Black Mountain revisited''. Cardarelli, Joe; Skipper, Jim; Maryland Institute, College of Art, and Viridian Productions, producers. altimore, Md. Viridian Productions of the Maryland Institute, College of Art; 1990. 1 videocassette (54 min.) * ''KUMQUAT'' #3 (Hewitt, Geof, Editor, Enosburg Falls, VT: Kumquat Press, 1971. 52 pp.)

External links

The Maine Book – Selected Poems by Joe Cardarelli

Founder of Spectrum of Poetic Fire

This Can Free

Poetry in Baltimore

Corvus by Anselm Hollo, includes Words for Joe Cardarelli

CD of spoken word dedicated to Joe Cardarelli
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cardarelli, Joe 1944 births 1994 deaths 20th-century American poets Maryland Institute College of Art faculty Poets from Maryland