Carey, Steve: The Collected Poems of Steve Carey

Subpress Collective, paperback

Edited by Edmund Berrigan

Publication Date: May 15, 2026

Publisher Marketing: 

A remarkable florilegium of poetry by underground stalwart Steve Carey, edited by the warmly astute Edmund Berrigan, with introduction, colorful history, and notation. Carey, a devotee of poetry, who died young at age 43, is quick to sound, lift his insight and register “panoramic”, formal too. Antics? He makes me laugh and weep. Such fluidity and confidence of wit, going askew. He peopled his poems. And craft? Steve is crafty, shaping, dallying with dailiness as well. His timing is great. Domesticity as a campfire. Our brash wayward century lost on harsh cusp of a cliff there’s something to it, in that I think he saw these hard times coming, and had propensity to stay “in”. Rescue the poetry inside, save the civilization. Carey came from a cinematic big time actor family. But inhabited a milieu his own, his core in friendships in poetry was quietly blooming, from west coast ways to NYC’s downtown mores. We talk about a special emotion in poetry only poetry hums. Steve Carey had it, has it. A soulful hermit’s gifted sophistication yet alive with mental, sinuous surprise. He noticed and listened, conversed, read books endlessly, loved poetry and heard the call. And in his work you get to get closer to the heart of language. The world will curl up/ The world will curl your remarkable lip/And you will live forever if, quip well, abiding time/ Abides/ And seizing time flies to seasons of will and want. — from “Song” Anne Waldman

How terrific that Steve Carey’s “vast, amazing” poetry has been gathered in this sensational book, thanks to the careful, comprehensive work of Edmund Berrigan. We can now see, for example, how the exuberant capitalization — the “ROLLICKING LETTERS” — of “Fleur-de-Lis” catapult him towards his well-known, festive, and irresistible “Goodbye Forever” and “The Complaint: What Are You, Some Kind of…” Irresistible is the word for Steve’s work, in fact: it’s romantic, alive, and silly, a silliness so large it becomes profound. Elinor Nauen

These are definitely the poems of the wrong guy, a really good writer, writing sketches about movies for tv guide, but then suddenly having sex. Steve’s poems are heavy and whimsical, rambling through a house, in a bathrobe, captivating, classical sort of, yet haunted, and the way his verses keep speaking, spouting quotes, no, dialogue, these might just be the best poems in the world. Eileen Myles

As The Collected Poems of Steve Carey reveal, Carey is a quintessential California poet of incredible sophistication and imagination. He was a lyric genius, master of the parenthetical aside, cinematic discontinuity, and cerebral derring-do nimble mind dance. Although not often recognized as such, Steve Carey was the poetry ambassador from California to the New York School. His was the voice of a truly original American poet. Pat Nolan

Steve Carey’s poetry is an ecstatic grin, a gentle serial fever. I’ve been dreaming of this book, and imagining its sounds in Carey’s booming Western voice, for years. Now, lovingly edited by Edmund Berrigan, “like a fracas of theologies,” “swacked / in honor of what you like,” “our systems touching / melting in the fable,” The Collected Poems of Steve Carey is here. Animated by “The list, and real pain,” Carey’s music of “whole fiestas / great pips ah spizzle” is the torqued sound of a New York School unlike any other. “You name it, spangle,” and these poems have it. Reach for this book—or the sky—pronto. Nick Sturm

Steve Carey’s poetry is a lighted aquarium filled with luminous debris. He leaves just enough space for the reader to swim around comfortably. It’s such a relief to finally have all his work in one place, including the ever-elusive sequence, The Lily of St. Marks. I hear reverb-like strains of Clark Coolidge, Eileen Myles and Jim Brodey. I am always shocked by the circuitry and static within Carey’s line. Its voltage has never let up. Cedar Sigo