Just in Time

by Robert Creeley

Just in Time: Poems 1984-1994 continues the consolidation of Robert Creeley's later work begun with So There: Poems 1976-83 (1998). Just in Time combines Memory Gardens (1986), Windows (1990), and Echoes (1994) in a volume that further validates the Lifetime Achievement Awards conferred on Creeley by the Before Columbus Foundation in 2000 and the Lannan Foundation in 2001.

Genres: Poetry

308 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2001

About the author

Robert Creeley 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's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P. Capen Professor of Poetry and the Humanities at State University of New York at Buffalo, and lived in Waldoboro, Maine, Buffalo, New York and Providence, Rhode Island, where he taught at Brown University. He was a recipient of the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and was much beloved as a generous presence in many poets' lives.

Reviews

[Shannon McCue · Rating 5 out of 5]

in love with robert creeley.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over the unwritten
and under the written
and under and over
and in back and in front of
or up or down or in
or in place of, or not,
of this and this, of
all that is, of it.

- Just in Time for Anne, pg. 100

Just in Time combines Memory Gardens , Windows , and Echoes ...

from Memory Gardens ...

It isn't in the world of
fragile relationships

or memories, nothing
you could have brought with you.

It's snowing in Toronto.
It's four-thirty, a winter evening,

and the tv looks like a faded
hailstorm. The people

you know are down the hall,
maybe, but you're tired,

you're alone, and that's happy.
Give up and lie down.

- Hotel, pg. 39-40

* * *

Had gone up to
down or across dis-
placed eagerly
unwitting hoped for

mother's place in time
for supper just
to say anything
to her again one

simple clarity her
unstuck glued
deadness emptied
into vagueness hair

remember wisp that
smile like half
her eyes brown eyes
her thinning arms

could life her
in my arms so
hold to her so
take her in my arms.

- Memory Gardens, pg. 67-68

* * *

Say nothing
to it.
Push it away.
Don't answer.

Be grey,
oblique presence.
Be nothing
there.

If it speaks
to you, it
only wants
you for itself

and it has
more than you,
much
more.

- Knock Knock, pg. 75

from Windows ...

Flakes falling
out window make
no place, no place -

no faces, traces,
wastes of whatever
wanted to be -

was here
momentlt mother,
was here

- Sparks Street Echo, pg. 143

* * *

The trees are kept
in the centre of the court,
where they take up room
just to prove it -

and tha garbage cans extend
on the asphalt at the far side
under the grey sky and the building's
recessed, regular windows.

All these go up and down
with significant pattern,
and people look out of them.
One can see their faces.

I know I am safe here
and that no one will get me,
no matter where it is
or who can find me.

- X, pg. 183

* * *

Whatever's
to be
thought
of thinking
thinking's
thought of
it still
thinks
it thinks
to know
itself so
thought.

*

Though so
itself know to
thinks it
thinks still it
of thought
thinking's
thinking
of thought
be to
whatever's.

- Whatever, pg. 88-89

from Echoes ...

Entire memory
hangs tree
in mind to see
a bird be -

bu now puts stutter
to work, shutters
the windows, shudders,
sits and mutters -

because can't
go back, still
can't get
out. Still can't.

- Echo, pg. 215

* * *

Brutish recall
seems useless now
to us all.

But my teeth you said
were yellow
have stayed nonetheless.

It was your handsomeness
went sour, your
girlish insouciance,

one said.
Was being afraid
neurotic?

Did you talk of it.
Was the high cliff jumpable.
Enough enough?

Fifty years
have passed.
I look back,

while you stand here,
see you there, still
see you there.

- Echo, pg. 250-251

* * *

Find your way out
no doubt
or in
again begin

Spaces wait
faced
in the dark
no waste

Were there
was here
was
always near

Sit down to see
be quiet be
friend
the end

- Echo for Eck, pg. 280

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

difficult to read at times but extremely interesting

[Acolyte · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried. but, minority. will again, as a wild patience has taken me this far.