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Selected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945–2005
This new, compact Selected Poems offers for the first time a balanced survey of Robert Creeley's entire sixty years of poetic accomplishment. It showcases the works that made him one of the most beloved and significant writers of the past century while inviting a new recognition of his enduring commitments, fluency, and power.
- GenresPoetry
338 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
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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 - 16 of 16 reviews
October 20, 2014
“Silence, silence… which is in me / like a hill”: Lessons to be taken from Robert Creeley
Admittedly, whenever I sit down to read “one of the greats” for the first time, my inner-skeptic finds her way out and asks, “What’s with all the hype?” I ask this question not for the sake of propelling myself forward, or of devaluing late-writers, but for the sake of asking what contemporary writers should be taking from their predecessors. Especially the ones widely marked as “great.”
While I like to see myself as well-read, there are still some significant holes in the foundation of my reading (at least to any great extent) of these predecessors—Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Robert Creeley, to name a few. These writers, along with John Ashbery and Robert Hass (again, to only name a few) are among those that I either have or will question and/or challenge when I first turn to their work. When I sat down with Robert Creeley’s Selected Poems, 1945-2005, this afternoon, I went in only having read a few poems previously, knowing a lot of opinions about the writer’s work and feeling skeptical about whether or not his work would meet the demands of all the praise.
In a word, no—I was not disappointed.
Referring first to the title of my blog post, Robert Creeley’s work offers many lessons to his readers who are also writers; and these lessons are written well enough to be taken note of and are subtle enough to be ignored (if the reader so wishes). Beyond simply admiring the wide range in Creeley’s writing style and topic choices, I admired the ways in which he described the Body and, oddly enough, the Weather, as well as his meta-critiques of language, and even built-in lessons on such writing provisions as enjambment.
In looking specifically at Creeley’s exploration of the body and of weather (or natural conditions, to expand the view), his stance on the relationship between the body and nature, or humankind and nature, becomes clear: they are interconnected.
THE DEATH OF VENUS
I dreamt her sensual proportions
had suffered sea-change,
that she was a porpoise, a
sea-beast rising lucid from the mist.
The sound of waves killed speech
but there were gestures –
of my own, it was to call her closer,
of hers, she snorted and filled her lungs with water,
then sank, to the bottom,
and looking down, clear it was, like crystal,
there I saw her. (58)
Reading a poem such as “The Death of Venus,” the poem is both about the exploration of a woman and the man’s relationship with her, but also the mysteries of that relationship, both unpacked and complicated further through the use of metaphor. There is also a sense of enlightenment through nature, when the man seems to see the woman through the water “clear [as] it was, like crystal” for the first time, clearly (58). This enlightenment is similarly carried over into other poems and is also used as a form of explanation for worldly issues. The poem, “The men in my life were…” describes, first, the male role models or influences in the narrator’s life, but the scenario is then complicated and expanded upon through the final two lines:
The wind rises in a
fucking, endless volume. (139)
In looking at a poem such as this, the initial explanation may be a simple listing of male familial figures; however, ending on a note of nature’s sheer size and endlessness, the relationship between the narrator becomes, both, violent and seemingly hopeless. Using nature’s conditions as a means to describe and complicate the layers of relationships seems to be one of Creeley’s many talents, and though this first Selected compiles poems from a series of sixteen individual poetry collections, this method of relating the body with nature is not exhausted.
However—not only does Creeley model the use of nature in poetry effectively, there are also many other writing lessons that can be taken, simply by looking at what Creeley does within the context of a poem—take, for instance, his poem, “3 in 1.”
3 IN 1
The bird
flies
out the
window. She
flies.
*
The bird flies
out the
window. She
flies.
*
The bird
flies. She
flies.
Granted, this poem is still largely about nature, and there are even implications placed on the female body, through the use of “she.” However, a poem such as this one also teaches the reader something about the importance of enjambment, in that the first two sections are identical, other than their spatial integrity. In the first section, “the bird” is somewhat removed from the action of “flies,” as if she has not yet flown, though the second section more immediately suggests the bird’s current motion. Finally, in the final, reduced section, “the bird” and the pronoun “she” are directly paralleled after being visually separated by “out the window” in the preceding sections. Now, why is this important? After all, if the decision is ultimately left up to the writer about where to place the line break, or how to use
white space,
why should the writer, in a sense, point out that he is making these decisions? Perhaps in a poem such as this one, the intent could be used as a means to suggest motion to the reader, in a sort of step-by-step form. Then again, it also provides the reader with a reminder of the importance of line breaks and enjambment, despite whatever Creeley’s intent might have been.
Though these are very minor, and brief, explanations of some of what Creeley has provided to writers, a review such as this one is only meant to provide a snapshot, and can only provide a snapshot, of what such a profound writer has done. In the words of John Ashbery, “these poems are “so fantastically simple and so satisfyingly complicated [that they] band together like the days in ‘One Day’”:
ONE DAY
One day after another –
perfect.
They all fit.
And to add one final thought to Ashbery’s account, these poems, just like days, can all be perfect, and can fit perfectly together, if the reader has an open mind when sitting down to ask the question, “What’s with all the hype?”
*
all quotes and poems from Robert Creeley’s Selected Poems, 1945-2005, edited by Benjamin Friedlander (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008)
Admittedly, whenever I sit down to read “one of the greats” for the first time, my inner-skeptic finds her way out and asks, “What’s with all the hype?” I ask this question not for the sake of propelling myself forward, or of devaluing late-writers, but for the sake of asking what contemporary writers should be taking from their predecessors. Especially the ones widely marked as “great.”
While I like to see myself as well-read, there are still some significant holes in the foundation of my reading (at least to any great extent) of these predecessors—Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Robert Creeley, to name a few. These writers, along with John Ashbery and Robert Hass (again, to only name a few) are among those that I either have or will question and/or challenge when I first turn to their work. When I sat down with Robert Creeley’s Selected Poems, 1945-2005, this afternoon, I went in only having read a few poems previously, knowing a lot of opinions about the writer’s work and feeling skeptical about whether or not his work would meet the demands of all the praise.
In a word, no—I was not disappointed.
Referring first to the title of my blog post, Robert Creeley’s work offers many lessons to his readers who are also writers; and these lessons are written well enough to be taken note of and are subtle enough to be ignored (if the reader so wishes). Beyond simply admiring the wide range in Creeley’s writing style and topic choices, I admired the ways in which he described the Body and, oddly enough, the Weather, as well as his meta-critiques of language, and even built-in lessons on such writing provisions as enjambment.
In looking specifically at Creeley’s exploration of the body and of weather (or natural conditions, to expand the view), his stance on the relationship between the body and nature, or humankind and nature, becomes clear: they are interconnected.
THE DEATH OF VENUS
I dreamt her sensual proportions
had suffered sea-change,
that she was a porpoise, a
sea-beast rising lucid from the mist.
The sound of waves killed speech
but there were gestures –
of my own, it was to call her closer,
of hers, she snorted and filled her lungs with water,
then sank, to the bottom,
and looking down, clear it was, like crystal,
there I saw her. (58)
Reading a poem such as “The Death of Venus,” the poem is both about the exploration of a woman and the man’s relationship with her, but also the mysteries of that relationship, both unpacked and complicated further through the use of metaphor. There is also a sense of enlightenment through nature, when the man seems to see the woman through the water “clear [as] it was, like crystal” for the first time, clearly (58). This enlightenment is similarly carried over into other poems and is also used as a form of explanation for worldly issues. The poem, “The men in my life were…” describes, first, the male role models or influences in the narrator’s life, but the scenario is then complicated and expanded upon through the final two lines:
The wind rises in a
fucking, endless volume. (139)
In looking at a poem such as this, the initial explanation may be a simple listing of male familial figures; however, ending on a note of nature’s sheer size and endlessness, the relationship between the narrator becomes, both, violent and seemingly hopeless. Using nature’s conditions as a means to describe and complicate the layers of relationships seems to be one of Creeley’s many talents, and though this first Selected compiles poems from a series of sixteen individual poetry collections, this method of relating the body with nature is not exhausted.
However—not only does Creeley model the use of nature in poetry effectively, there are also many other writing lessons that can be taken, simply by looking at what Creeley does within the context of a poem—take, for instance, his poem, “3 in 1.”
3 IN 1
The bird
flies
out the
window. She
flies.
*
The bird flies
out the
window. She
flies.
*
The bird
flies. She
flies.
Granted, this poem is still largely about nature, and there are even implications placed on the female body, through the use of “she.” However, a poem such as this one also teaches the reader something about the importance of enjambment, in that the first two sections are identical, other than their spatial integrity. In the first section, “the bird” is somewhat removed from the action of “flies,” as if she has not yet flown, though the second section more immediately suggests the bird’s current motion. Finally, in the final, reduced section, “the bird” and the pronoun “she” are directly paralleled after being visually separated by “out the window” in the preceding sections. Now, why is this important? After all, if the decision is ultimately left up to the writer about where to place the line break, or how to use
white space,
why should the writer, in a sense, point out that he is making these decisions? Perhaps in a poem such as this one, the intent could be used as a means to suggest motion to the reader, in a sort of step-by-step form. Then again, it also provides the reader with a reminder of the importance of line breaks and enjambment, despite whatever Creeley’s intent might have been.
Though these are very minor, and brief, explanations of some of what Creeley has provided to writers, a review such as this one is only meant to provide a snapshot, and can only provide a snapshot, of what such a profound writer has done. In the words of John Ashbery, “these poems are “so fantastically simple and so satisfyingly complicated [that they] band together like the days in ‘One Day’”:
ONE DAY
One day after another –
perfect.
They all fit.
And to add one final thought to Ashbery’s account, these poems, just like days, can all be perfect, and can fit perfectly together, if the reader has an open mind when sitting down to ask the question, “What’s with all the hype?”
*
all quotes and poems from Robert Creeley’s Selected Poems, 1945-2005, edited by Benjamin Friedlander (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008)
March 9, 2024
3.6/5 I read mostly just the early stuff out of Creeley's poetry, loved the utilitarian approach to love in his poems, an approach that rhymes with real lived experiences. Perhaps I will return to read his later works, but for now on to the next.
February 17, 2025
Two stars for the early work, fours stars for the strong later work.
Unlike quite a few other reviewers on goodreads who seem to prefer Creeley's early poetry, I felt that like McClure's poems, Creeley's poems got better and better with age, like a good wine.
One of my motivations for reading this was to see why Charles Bukowski hated Creeley's poetry so much. Was Bukowski's hatred justified? My answer is a cautious yes and no.
I suspect that the whole enjambment trend was something that jarred on Bukowski's senses. And I have to admit that I can kind of see his point. Enjambment seems like a neat trick at first, which makes us read lines in a different way, giving them new readings, but it grows weary and old, quite fast. Secondly, while not being completely against rhyming poetry (in fact I quite like rhyming poetry if it's done well), many of Creeley's rhymes come across as trite and contrived. Third, he has these real 'nothing poems' (sorry Creeley fans) like "A Piece" which really are that. Sorry, let's call a spade a spade, and a nothing nowhere poem exactly that. Tell me WHY you like it, and I might change my mind.
Now that I have my gripes out of my chest, let's look at the positive aspects of Creeley's poetry.
Creeley also has some truly superb poems (I really mean that) that stand the test of time like "The Rain," "Oh No," or "Histoire de Florida." The poem "The Rain" is one of the most poignant moving poems I have heard in modern poetry and it still moves me to this year (after first hearing it about 15 years ago).
Therefore, like many poetry collections, the Selected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-2005 contains some of Creeley's best work but it also contains plenty of forgettable fluff. I was disappointed that they left out one of my favorites of his called "Return" which is available on the CD called "I Know a Man" - why it's not in this volume really beats me.
In the Introduction to this volume, Benjamin Friedlander writes, "Yet the speed brings pleasure, whatever its meaning; one wants to read the poem again and again, even in the absence of understanding.” Here I must disagree with Friedlander. If ultimately, the poem does not bring some kind of understanding to the reader, it is just joyful solipsistic window-dressing, attractive objets placed around the room and nothing more. It might have meaning to the poet but if it does not have meaning to the reader, the poem can only exist as a hermit (even if it is a beautiful hermit), never as a ‘great poem’. I wish to argue that TRUE poetry with vigor and real life in it must be more than that to us. To quote Ezra Pound, one of Creeley's heroes, "The book should be a ball of light in one's hand." This book sometimes glowed, but it was often a very soft ember, at risk of being extinguished with every page.
We need a "selected of a selected", in short, to REALLY show Creeley's greatness. And based on what I read from this book, the last 3-4 volumes by Creeley were among his strongest. There is less enjambment, and a freer but more elegant and polished style comes into the poems, which I really liked.
To sum up, this book is worth reading but there is plenty of slush you'll have to wade through before you reach the diamonds.
Unlike quite a few other reviewers on goodreads who seem to prefer Creeley's early poetry, I felt that like McClure's poems, Creeley's poems got better and better with age, like a good wine.
One of my motivations for reading this was to see why Charles Bukowski hated Creeley's poetry so much. Was Bukowski's hatred justified? My answer is a cautious yes and no.
I suspect that the whole enjambment trend was something that jarred on Bukowski's senses. And I have to admit that I can kind of see his point. Enjambment seems like a neat trick at first, which makes us read lines in a different way, giving them new readings, but it grows weary and old, quite fast. Secondly, while not being completely against rhyming poetry (in fact I quite like rhyming poetry if it's done well), many of Creeley's rhymes come across as trite and contrived. Third, he has these real 'nothing poems' (sorry Creeley fans) like "A Piece" which really are that. Sorry, let's call a spade a spade, and a nothing nowhere poem exactly that. Tell me WHY you like it, and I might change my mind.
Now that I have my gripes out of my chest, let's look at the positive aspects of Creeley's poetry.
Creeley also has some truly superb poems (I really mean that) that stand the test of time like "The Rain," "Oh No," or "Histoire de Florida." The poem "The Rain" is one of the most poignant moving poems I have heard in modern poetry and it still moves me to this year (after first hearing it about 15 years ago).
Therefore, like many poetry collections, the Selected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-2005 contains some of Creeley's best work but it also contains plenty of forgettable fluff. I was disappointed that they left out one of my favorites of his called "Return" which is available on the CD called "I Know a Man" - why it's not in this volume really beats me.
In the Introduction to this volume, Benjamin Friedlander writes, "Yet the speed brings pleasure, whatever its meaning; one wants to read the poem again and again, even in the absence of understanding.” Here I must disagree with Friedlander. If ultimately, the poem does not bring some kind of understanding to the reader, it is just joyful solipsistic window-dressing, attractive objets placed around the room and nothing more. It might have meaning to the poet but if it does not have meaning to the reader, the poem can only exist as a hermit (even if it is a beautiful hermit), never as a ‘great poem’. I wish to argue that TRUE poetry with vigor and real life in it must be more than that to us. To quote Ezra Pound, one of Creeley's heroes, "The book should be a ball of light in one's hand." This book sometimes glowed, but it was often a very soft ember, at risk of being extinguished with every page.
We need a "selected of a selected", in short, to REALLY show Creeley's greatness. And based on what I read from this book, the last 3-4 volumes by Creeley were among his strongest. There is less enjambment, and a freer but more elegant and polished style comes into the poems, which I really liked.
To sum up, this book is worth reading but there is plenty of slush you'll have to wade through before you reach the diamonds.
October 19, 2012
How tackle Creeley's 5 decade writing career? As would be expected, there are ups and downs. I lean more toward his earlier stuff--from For Love, Words, and Pieces--but I like most of it. Toward the end, there are bits of grandpa-ness which I wasn't as crazy about--writing about his body failing, getting old, etc. But overall, what kept me going was the tension and torque of his work on the line, which, I think, is unmatched by any other poet writing in the American lang-wedge.
Here's a great little engine:
The Sentence
There is that in love
which, by the syntax of,
men find women and join
their bodies to their minds
--which wants so to acquire
a continuity, a place,
a demonstration that it must
be one's own sentence.
Here's a great little engine:
The Sentence
There is that in love
which, by the syntax of,
men find women and join
their bodies to their minds
--which wants so to acquire
a continuity, a place,
a demonstration that it must
be one's own sentence.
October 2, 2011
I expected to have more of a taste for these poems' features: one- or two-word lines, simple unto themselves. They lacked finish, as they say in the wine world; sinewy, but casual instead of wild and booming. The prosody arbitrary, the lexicon and content familiar.
Read
April 11, 2009"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."
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."
March 21, 2024
I’m always a fan of silly little love poems. Robert Creeley voices his anxieties so clearly. Relatable, man.
January 20, 2022
Oh god, let's go.
This is a poem for Kenneth Patchen.
Everywhere they are shooting people.
People people people people.
This is a poem for Allen Ginsberg.
I want to be elsewhere, elsewhere.
This is a poem about a horse that got tired.
Poor. Old. Tired. Horse.
I want to go home.
I want you to go home.
This is a poem which tells the story,
which is the story.
I don't know. I get lost.
If only they would stand still and let me.
Are you happy, sad, not happy, please come.
This is a poem for everyone.
* * *
Stone,
like stillness,
around you my
mind sits, it is
a proper form
for
it, like
stone, like
compression itself,
fixed fast,
grey,
without a sound.
* * *
A little
house with
small
windows,
a gentle
fall of the
ground to
a small
stream. The trees
are both close
and green, a tall
sense of enclosure.
There is a sky
of blue
and a faint sun
through clouds.
* * *
Broken heart, you
timeless wonder.
What a small
place to be.
True, true
to life, to life.
* * *
If it isn't fun, don't do it.
You'll have to do enough that isn't.
Such is life, like they say,
no one gets away without paying
and since you don't get to keep it
anyhow, who needs it.
* * *
Back in time
for supper
when the lights
* * *
What's still here settles
at the edges of this
simple place still
waiting to be seen.
*
I didn't go
anywhere and
I haven't
come back!
*
You went by so
quickly thinking
there's a whole world
in between.
*
It's not a
final distance,
this here
and now.
*
How much I would
give just to know
you're standing in
whatever way here.
*
Human eyes
are lights to me
in this stone.
*
No way to
tell you anything
more than
this one.
*
You walk tired
or refreshed, are
past in a moment,
but saw me.
*
Wish happiness
most for us,
whoever we are,
wherever.
*
If I sit here
long enough,
all will pass me by
one way or another.
*
Nothing left out,
it's all in a heap,
all the people
completed.
*
Night's eye is
memory
in day-
light.
*
I've come and gone from here
with no effect,
and now feel
no use left.
*
How far from
where it
was I'll
never know.
*
You there
next to the others
in front of
the one behind!
*
No one speaks
alone. It
comes out
of something.
*
Could I think
of all you
must have felt?
Tell me.
*
What's inside,
what's the place
apart from
this one?
*
They say this
used to be
a forest
with a lake.
*
I'm just
a common
rock,
talking.
*
World's
still got
four
corners.
*
What's
that
up there
looking down?
*
You've got a nice
face and
kind eyes and
all the trimmings.
*
We talk like
this too
often someone
will get wise!
* * *
One's here
and there is still elsewhere
along some road to hell
where all is well -
or heaven
even
where all the saints still wait
and guard the golden gate.
This is a poem for Kenneth Patchen.
Everywhere they are shooting people.
People people people people.
This is a poem for Allen Ginsberg.
I want to be elsewhere, elsewhere.
This is a poem about a horse that got tired.
Poor. Old. Tired. Horse.
I want to go home.
I want you to go home.
This is a poem which tells the story,
which is the story.
I don't know. I get lost.
If only they would stand still and let me.
Are you happy, sad, not happy, please come.
This is a poem for everyone.
- Please, for James Broughton, pg. 64
* * *
Stone,
like stillness,
around you my
mind sits, it is
a proper form
for
it, like
stone, like
compression itself,
fixed fast,
grey,
without a sound.
- After Mallarmé, pg. 82
* * *
A little
house with
small
windows,
a gentle
fall of the
ground to
a small
stream. The trees
are both close
and green, a tall
sense of enclosure.
There is a sky
of blue
and a faint sun
through clouds.
- A Picture, pg. 110
* * *
Broken heart, you
timeless wonder.
What a small
place to be.
True, true
to life, to life.
- Echo, pg. 159
* * *
If it isn't fun, don't do it.
You'll have to do enough that isn't.
Such is life, like they say,
no one gets away without paying
and since you don't get to keep it
anyhow, who needs it.
- Sad Advice, pg. 208
* * *
Back in time
for supper
when the lights
- Echo, pg. 218
* * *
What's still here settles
at the edges of this
simple place still
waiting to be seen.
*
I didn't go
anywhere and
I haven't
come back!
*
You went by so
quickly thinking
there's a whole world
in between.
*
It's not a
final distance,
this here
and now.
*
How much I would
give just to know
you're standing in
whatever way here.
*
Human eyes
are lights to me
in this stone.
*
No way to
tell you anything
more than
this one.
*
You walk tired
or refreshed, are
past in a moment,
but saw me.
*
Wish happiness
most for us,
whoever we are,
wherever.
*
If I sit here
long enough,
all will pass me by
one way or another.
*
Nothing left out,
it's all in a heap,
all the people
completed.
*
Night's eye is
memory
in day-
light.
*
I've come and gone from here
with no effect,
and now feel
no use left.
*
How far from
where it
was I'll
never know.
*
You there
next to the others
in front of
the one behind!
*
No one speaks
alone. It
comes out
of something.
*
Could I think
of all you
must have felt?
Tell me.
*
What's inside,
what's the place
apart from
this one?
*
They say this
used to be
a forest
with a lake.
*
I'm just
a common
rock,
talking.
*
World's
still got
four
corners.
*
What's
that
up there
looking down?
*
You've got a nice
face and
kind eyes and
all the trimmings.
*
We talk like
this too
often someone
will get wise!
- Eight Plus, pg. 231-235
* * *
One's here
and there is still elsewhere
along some road to hell
where all is well -
or heaven
even
where all the saints still wait
and guard the golden gate.
- On Earth, pg. 318
September 7, 2024
I have been a fan of Creeley for over fifty years, I had not read him for years. Sadly, I did not enjoy much of what he wrote in the last fifty years.
The early poems are creative and musical. The later poems are more like prose in narrow lines.
Prose that is not that creative. I will always have a place in m6 heart for his poems, but that will not include his later work. If the later poems were not there I would have given more stars.
The early poems are creative and musical. The later poems are more like prose in narrow lines.
Prose that is not that creative. I will always have a place in m6 heart for his poems, but that will not include his later work. If the later poems were not there I would have given more stars.
February 26, 2008
My favorite is titled "Something"
February 28, 2008
This is the perfect companion to Creeley's first selected poems released in 1991.
Highly recommended as a portable companion
and a great way to introduce Him to new readers.
Highly recommended as a portable companion
and a great way to introduce Him to new readers.
March 17, 2008
A favorite poet. Very zen.
December 2, 2010
obsessed with "For Love"
August 9, 2010
i can't take all of robert creeley, but when he's good, he's so good. sometimes diet creeley is enough.
June 19, 2025
I love the modernist style. He writes like EE Cummings combined with WCW. But the themes were much darker, which isn't my preference.
Read
August 16, 2017My favorite poem is "Do You Think..." pages 141-142
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews