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Book by Creeley, Robert
- GenresPoetry
85 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 1976
24 people want to read
About the author
Robert Creeley
330 books117 followersRobert 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.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 18, 2022
HELLO is presented as a journal, dating from February 29 - May 3, 1976. More specifically, a travel journal. In a little over two months, Creeley passed through nine countries - which, in the second volume of his collected poems, he refers to as being "a peculiarly American circumstance". Referring to the personal tone of this egocentric text, the poet writes...
"The tourist will always be singular, no matter what the occassion otherwise - and there is a sense, I think, in which Americans still presume the world as something to look at and use, rather than to live in."
HELLO is divided - not by date, but by country. As it should be. Deriving as its inspiration the cultural influences of foreign territories, date is rendered incidental and insignificant.
The poet, it is worth mentioning, seems to be as interested in the hotels as in the cultures. Many of the poems are named for, or make reference to, the hotels where the poet stays...
If the world's one's
own experience of it,
then why walk around
in it, or think of it.
More would be more
than one could know
alone, more than myself's
small senses, of it.
What I like about HELLO... The poet's allusion to other poets. It stands to reason that a poet's journal would be preoccupied with other poets, would demonstrate the poet's affinity for poetry - whether he encountered the poet's work or encountered the poet in person, Creeley acknowledges the influence of poets such as Richard Brautigan, Allen Ginsberg, and Irving Layton...
Drink. Think
of meeting Richard Brautigan,
and brandy, years ago.
Talking Ginsbergian
chop-talk's
a pleasure...
...Recall
Irving Layton's classic line
re his mother: "her face
was flushed with bargains, etc."
One of my favourite stanzas from HELLO...
Why not make them
higher, and higher, and
higher - until they fall down?
Another favourite, one of the shortest poems in the collection...
Since I can't
kill anyone,
I'd better
sit still.
"The tourist will always be singular, no matter what the occassion otherwise - and there is a sense, I think, in which Americans still presume the world as something to look at and use, rather than to live in."
- The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley: 1975-2005 (pg. 91)
HELLO is divided - not by date, but by country. As it should be. Deriving as its inspiration the cultural influences of foreign territories, date is rendered incidental and insignificant.
The poet, it is worth mentioning, seems to be as interested in the hotels as in the cultures. Many of the poems are named for, or make reference to, the hotels where the poet stays...
If the world's one's
own experience of it,
then why walk around
in it, or think of it.
More would be more
than one could know
alone, more than myself's
small senses, of it.
- Hamilton Hotel
What I like about HELLO... The poet's allusion to other poets. It stands to reason that a poet's journal would be preoccupied with other poets, would demonstrate the poet's affinity for poetry - whether he encountered the poet's work or encountered the poet in person, Creeley acknowledges the influence of poets such as Richard Brautigan, Allen Ginsberg, and Irving Layton...
Drink. Think
of meeting Richard Brautigan,
and brandy, years ago.
- Thinks to Do in Tokyo
Talking Ginsbergian
chop-talk's
a pleasure...
- Talk
...Recall
Irving Layton's classic line
re his mother: "her face
was flushed with bargains, etc."
- Out Here
One of my favourite stanzas from HELLO...
Why not make them
higher, and higher, and
higher - until they fall down?
- Buildings
Another favourite, one of the shortest poems in the collection...
Since I can't
kill anyone,
I'd better
sit still.
- Here
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January 14, 2013811.54 C913h 1978
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews