Zend certified PHP/Magento developer

How to reuse a ssl connection fetching imap commands to gmail server with curl?

curl -v –url “imaps://imap.gmail.com” –user “user:pw”

Currently curl opens and closes for every imap fetch the connection.
Is there away to tell curl to reuse the connection and making imap fetches so that curl doesnt need to create a new ssl session for every fetch?