Beyond Waking

Beyond Waking is a stunning book that transcends time in its movement: stripping it down, puncturing the layers of formality of presentation/while at the same time honoring them. Karasek's very sure sense of line becomes part of the question, as the poems move with a great sense of organic interruption and recall---placing us in the heart of memory and moment---simulataneously. It lives brilliantly amid the collecting and dispersing/the intimate and the public, where madness and joy spiral and swirl away---delivering us to the pivot of belief.---Jan Beatty, author of Red Sugar, Boneshaker, Mad River and Ravenous

Prepare to enter a world: Beyond Waking. A world both archetypal and intensely personal, where the boundaries are porous between childhood and adulthood, the forgotten and remembered. In Beyond Waking, the flower once seen remains on the inner eye, the note once heard diminishes but never disappears. Spend time in Joseph Karasek's world...you'll return with a clearer eye, a deeper heart, for your own.---Richard St. John, author of The Pure Inconstancy of Grace

The poems in Joseph Karasek's Beyond Waking, manage somehow to be both vast and delicate---taking on the largest of the large issues: memory, desire and loss, and yet doing so with an absolutely authoritative restraint. Where other poets might veer off into familiar closures and comfortable reconciliations, Karasek adroitly steps aside, allowing, as William Carlos Williams does, for the spaces around words to make their articulate music. Whether he is a man "wearing shoes with laces too long," or a visionary "encaved with (his) soul in iridescent darkness, ascending" he is a compelling and accomplished poet whose work both satisfies and delights.---Gail Wronsky, author of Poems for Infidels, Dying for Beauty and The Love-talkers

Joseph Karasek's is a poetry of dualism, and individual consciousness that is both at home and a stranger in this world, both participant and witness. Lyricism, richness of language, deep emotion. Beyond Waking is a supreme act of the imagination.---Michael Wurster, author of The British Detective, The Cruelty of the Desert and The Snake Charmer's Daughter

Joseph Karasek grew up in New York City. He created school orchestras' on the elementary and secondary levels, and taught music composition and music theory at Long Island University. He has lived in Pittsburgh, PA since 1991, and now spends his winters in California. His Poetry has been published in Blue Arc West: An Anthology of California Poets (Tebot Bach, 2006) and Along These Rivers: Poetry and Photography from Pittsburgh (Quadrant, 2008).