The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975

by Robert Creeley, Penelope Creeley (Primary Contributor)

Robert Creely, Wilmington, N.C., June 29, 1981: There is a sense of increment, of accumulation, in these poems that is very dear to me. Like it or not, it outwits whatever I then thought to say and gains thereby whatever I was in saying it. Thankfully, I was never what I thought I was, certainly never enough. Otherwise, when it came time to think specifically of this collection and of what might be decorously omitted, I decided to stick with my initial judgments, book by tender book, because these were the occasions most definitive of what the poems might mean, either to me or to anyone else. To define their value in hindsight would be to miss the factual life they had either made manifest or engendered. So everything that was printed in a book between the dates of 1945 and 1975 is here included as are also those poems published in magazines or broadsides. In short, all that was in print is here. I'm delighted that they are all finally together, respected, included, each with their place--like some ultimate family reunion! I feel much relieved to see them now as a company at last. I'm tempted to invoke again those poets who served as a measure and resource for me all my life as a poet. But either they will be heard here, in the words and rhythms themselves, or one will simply know the. This time I am, in this respect, alone these are my poems. We are a singular compact. Finally, there's no end to any of it, or none we'll know that simply. But I'm very relieved that this much, like they say, is done. So be it.

Genres: Poetry, American, Literature, The United States Of America, Classics, United States, 20th Century

681 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

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

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creeley is wonderful.

Saying one has "read" this book is like the Chinese brother in the kid's book thinking he can swallow the WHOLE ocean. He does, for a while - but can't hold it in!

So imagine trying to REVIEW it.

There is so much going on here, that NOBODY can capture it all, let alone "finish" it.

It’s so much like John Cage’s music.

Or Marcel Duchamp’s Art.

If we haven’t Interiorized Silence, at one point or another in our lives, we are at sea with all three of these Icons.

Silence lets us live. Silence Breathes. Silence IS when Everything ISN’T. Music is Full of Silence, and that’s where its Meaning resides.

So THAT’s the Meaning of the Music of Robert Creeley here, too.

OK.

So for this "review"... I'd like to just sit with you in Silence and WONDER at his early poetry.

You know, early, like in YOUR early years - that time in your life when your kids were little - the two of you were quietly settled down in a little place of your own, for the first time in your lives...

That’s the time when "a rose is a rose is a rose". When what you see is what you get. Nice and simple. Everything IS coming up roses, for the most part. Though, granted, there are vague hints of unease.

But, it was a time when you didn’t see the Big Picture. That didn’t matter.

You didn’t care about that, because you were Happy Where You Were. And you spoke personally, in the first person. It was a warm and cozy feeling.

Sure seems nice to many of us now!

Ah, sweet innocence.

And for the young Creeley there are very few thorns in his life. There is none of the later abstracted truculence - which owes more to Zen than to life’s aporias. For Simplicity - in your life or in your poetry - Dissolves Complex Problems Subconsciously.

So here we go - here’s the YOUNG Creeley, with his million-dollar ear...

A FRAGMENT:

On the street I am met with constant hostility
and would have finally nothing else around me,
except my children who are trained to love
and whom I intend to leave as relics of my intentions.

THE DRUMS:

How are you Harry the
last time we met it was
in Heaven
or so I remember

FOR THE NEW YEAR:

From something in the trees
looking down at me

or else an inexact sign
of a remote and artificial tenderness -

a woman who passes me
and who will not consider me -

things I have tried to take
with which to make something

like a toy for my children
and a story to be quietly forgotten.

Oh God, send me an omen
that I may remember more often.

Keep me, see to me,
let me look.

Being unhappy, there is the fate
of doing nothing right.

RETURN:

Quiet as is proper for such places,
The street, subdued, half-snow, half-rain,
Endless, but ending in the darkened doors.
Inside, as they who will be there always,
Quiet as is proper for such people -
Enough for now to be here, and
To know my door is one of these.
***

Four stars.

[Ken]

I don't know where to begin with this, critique-wise, so I won't. Let's just say Creeley is a big fan of short. Short words. Short lines. Short poems. To the point where some of his poetry reads like drills in meter and rhyme, like the musical equivalent of scales, and yet they were published and they did appear in one of his books.

Huge, but not his full oeuvre, as it covers the 30 years from '45-'75 and he died in 2005. So maybe it's his "young" poetry that leans so lean. I can open the book most anywhere for an example, so I will:

A Wish
by Robert Creeley

So much rain
to make the mud again,
trees green
and flowers also.

The water which
ran up the sun
and down again,
it is the same.

A man of supple
yielding manner
might, too, discover
ways of water.

Plain and simply said, Shaker style. Readers must prime and paint for themselves, IKEA-like. Then again, maybe the straightforward belies his true intent.

Song
by Ken Craft

Maybe the simplicity
outwits me.

Can I say, though, that I love the cover photo. Now that's a poet look. Roguish smile, cigarette cinched by the lips, beret on the head. Looks like he's in a hot air balloon, but I won't make that a clever part of my review.

[Parissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of my favorites...

The Rain

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent --
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.

[Stephen Hebert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creeley is, quite simply, my favorite amongst 20th century poets. Whenever I'm feeling too bored or tired to invest in longer works, I pull this volume out and read a few poems. It's difficult for me to explain what I love about Creeley. I just get a kick out of the wit and creativity.

Perhaps I should invest in his newer collected poems (1975-2000), as I'm quite unfamiliar with his recent work.

[Lucas Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Been reading this slowly for a couple of months. Read through the first four collections with great interest, but as the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, it became more of a slog. The observation, word play, and overall aesthetic remains, but the neat lyrics give way to long sequences of stanzas where the beginning of one poem blurs into the next. This is interesting, but I couldn't sustain as much interest. I ended up dipping into the later collections.

I still really appreciate Creeley and love his poems. He was such a beacon of creativity and vulnerability, but This collection is really long. I think a briefer engagement is what I really crave. Read For Love and Words. They are indelible.

[Leanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed many of these poems, but I think it would be very difficult for me to say why. Something about their openness, brevity, and weird line breaks, and the looseness of the syntax and grammar. Oddly textured, oddly rhythmic, a sort of Frank O-Hara-ish sweetness. Sometimes the poems get too obscure for me, or the play with syntax is so radical it makes me anxious (since it hinders understanding). I have a feeling this is poetry I could return to later and "get" better. At this point, I’m not really sure what I could take from it for my own writing—Creeley is not too interested in figurative or lyrical language, and that’s often where the heart of my interests lies. Still, his startling line breaks, his minimal style, and the brevity of so many of his poems, are really intriguing to me. I especially want to return to the book “For Love” some day. His poems seem always weird, always interesting.

Favorite book: "For Love"

Favorite poems: "The Warning," "Like They Say," "The Rain" (perhaps my fave!), "Words," "Enough."

"The Rain," for your viewing pleasure:

"The Rain"

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent---
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.

[Roman · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know, the apocryphal stars might have guessed that I would hate Robert Creeley, because he's so commonly compared to a 20th-century Whitman. My feelings for Whitman are cool at best, disdainful at worst.

Side note: I feel like Walt Whitman is so overrated. That sentimental old man.

I can't really articulate the way Creeley makes me feel. I read in a HONY post, once, that the marker of a good poem is that it changes you, that you are not the same person after you have read it. I don't really know if Creeley has "changed" me, but I do know that he wrote the only poem I've ever memorized:

My lady
fair with
soft
arms, what

can I say to
you—words, words
as if all
worlds were there.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grief, grief I suppose and sufficient
Grief makes us free
To be faithless and faithful together
As we have to be.

- D.H. Lawrence, Hymn to Priapus

The first volume of The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley includes the following books: The Charm, For Love, Words, Pieces, In London, His Idea, Thirty Things, Backwards, and Away. In addition, the first volume includes Creeley's uncollected poems from this period...

I wanted you
without virtue -
so to speak, a history
of alternatives.

Lusts of mind ache
for realization
no less than any appetite
wants enough.

- Again

* * *

The world
you know as
one piece after
another,

bending its
place in your mind
looking after the golden
sun.

- Sunset

* * *

Warmth
is the way
of all flesh

The length
is skin
and bones -
cold feet!

It's all night
long.

- Looking Out

[Amber Manning · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me a while to settle in with Creeley...
By the time I reached the poem "Numbers," I realized I was wrestling with Creeley the way Creeley is wrestling with himself. "Numbers" is just a fantastic poem but it was also one of those ones that--for me--came at exactly the right time (of day, in life, etc.).

Look
at
the
light
of
this
hour.

And the counting stops and we take a breath for a moment and this is Creeley at his most Creeley-ist and I'm here for.
By the time he gets around to quoting Leonard Cohen several poems later, I don't want the collection--or the anthology--to end.

[Loocuh Frayshure · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no poet who has impacted and stuck with me over my 27 years of life like Robert Creeley. He opened up the gates for a teenaged me to the idea of poetry as micro-composition, jamming the most raw, important ideas into the most economical language without giving up artistry. Some of his poems don’t land, but man when they work for me, they WORK. I think I’d be hard pressed to name someone who impacted my own verse experiments than him. Even my lyric writing is steeped in Creeley. Dude just fuckin’ rocks, even if so many of the poems in this massive collection I’m not crazy for.

[Kristina Hakanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

In addition to enjoying the poetry, I enjoyed attempting to understand (and, in my own writing practice, get the hang of) the isoverbal prosody he uses. The sparseness of many of his lines execute perfect landings. I read Creeley in order to know his work and ended up finding instructions or directions or inspirations to try, in the same mode of copying DaVinci’s drawings in order to learn something about the process.

[Tony Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The greatest American poet of his century not named Langston Hughes. He does with a stanza what most would do with a volume.

The prose is brisk, his vernacular graspable. Never pretentious, always heartfelt, positively sublime stuff.

[Pachyderm Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of wandering goes on here, through both the highways and byways of Creeley's heart, mind and soul.

A lot of squandering goes on here as well; of time, of space, in the throes of love and the sense of belonging in place.

[Taylor Napolsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of exploration here. Many sections I eagerly devoured, consistently thrilled, surprised and—naturally—impressed. A great poet.

[Sean Murray · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just read Robert Creeley. I think he was probably violent, cruel, cold, and he wasn’t smart enough to make two weeks of reading him much of a bright point.

[Abi · Rating 4 out of 5]

now these are some Poems

[Michael Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted so much to love this book, because I have read several Creeley poems here and there and enjoy so much his collaboration with Steve Swallow (Home). But I could only like some of this massive collection. Much of it left me baffled.

I suppose what troubles me is that some of what I enjoyed in reading this book might well be said of poems I could not find much to get excited about. I love the haiku-like quality of several of the poems, and it is the short, compact pieces that got to me. However, several of the short poems just seemed to sit there. No image. No idea. Just words.

Despite the musicality of Creeley's work, several poems seemed to jumble syntax for its own sake and repeat words for no particular reason. Maybe I just missed it. But a few of the poems made me feel that E.E. Cummings and Williams Carlos Williams had created a kind of Caliban, at times tender, but most often mumbling semi-coherently.

I did find some beautiful love/erotic poems. And despite my harsh reaction to my first reading, I do think I will need to return to this book and certainly to other Creeley collections. I haven't given up that I'll find more jewels.

[Kristin Winkler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed the way I write poetry and possibly everything else. Creeley taught me to think about and hear every word I use, to use words as sparingly as possible, and to realize that even in the space between words there is incredible depth and emotion. Every writer should read this book to learn about exerting control over one's language, which ultimately translates to a control over ego in the writing process.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few books have meant as much to me over the years. Read the early work in conjunction with the letters Creeley and Olson, both very poor ("couldn't afford a stamp last week..."), were writing at the time for an experience as moving (and, for a young writer, as instructive) as any I know in literature.

[Russ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read and re-read this book for the past 20 years of my life. I was lucky enough to live in Buffalo New York and got to know Bob Creeley. His inspiration to me has been the driving force in my life.
I love this book

[T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-reading again, because oh, oh, Creeley, he has my heart forever.

/ Re-read from 15 February to 19 March 2011.
/ Finally acquired my own copy on 2010! :) Re-read on December 2010.
/ Borrowed time again between 2006-2007.
/ First read 2005 (borrowed from the library).

[Tina Dalton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't expect to enjoy modern poetry, if I'm honest. I don't normally seek out poetry in my reading life. And yet, I found that I unexpectedly loved some of Creeley's work. His poets regarding his children really hit home for me.

[Kyle]

"I'll Be Here"

There is a lake of clear water.
There are forms of things despite us.

Pope said, "a little learning,"
and, and, and, and—the same.

Why don't you go home and sleep
and come back and talk some more.

[Kraig Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

When i got it i didn't realize this was his early stuff. He is extremely musical and have been more than impressed eating up half of it already.

[Shashi · Rating 4 out of 5]

a lot to sort through but worth it

[Allen]

seminal, when I was young, now important to re-view

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book to carry around, a portable Creely representing his earlier work.

[Matt Morris]

Read my review of this & other books at http://miscmss.blogspot.com/2013/12/l...

[Matthieu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm sorry it took me so long to 'get' you.

[Analia · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing poet!