[Clive Watkins]

Robert Creeley died yesterday (http://www.poets.org/academy/news/pr050330.cfm). I imagine that for some around these parts he will not be among their favourite writers, but as his books have been on my shelves – and on my desk – and many of his poems in my head for thirty years now, I felt the need to note the sad fact of his passing.

Clive Watkins

[nyctom]

I was surfing the net and just saw the news as well. I was sorry to hear it. I also like Creeley's work a great deal--his work speaks in a singular voice.

[Michael Juster]

Perhaps surprisingly to many of you, Creeley was a big influence on me in my youthful free verse days, and the tentative title for my second book (expected 2014 publication date--probably posthumous) is a line from Creeley. He had roots here in Belmont, too--Marion and I are just a few blocks from Creeley Road.

[Margaret Moore]

Clive,

Many thanks for posting this. I'm relatively ignorant of R.C's work, but he's on my 'to read' list.

Was struck by the musicality of these lines of his, which were apparently published in a 1998 collection.

Lighten the load.
Close the eyes.

Let the mind loosen,
the body die,

The bird fly off to
The opening sky.


Margaret.

[A. E. Stallings]

I'd like to start a thread on Creeley in Mastery. I can't say I know his work terribly well, though, so am depending on some of you to come over and discuss some favorite poems... I always enjoye reading appreciations, especially of poets with whose work I'm relatively unfamiliar. It helps me get a foot-hold.

Alicia

[wendy v]

This is Just a Note to Let You Know

the spindly roofer never showed,
that Robert Creeley
died today,
that all our flaws are long
and strange,
and just how much a pencil weighs

is in exact proportion to
the distance between it
and you,
that something's cool about a friend
who couches well,
who coffee-blends,

who makes you feel you're on
the mend,
that in my yard there is a bird
who sang
but didn't say a word
when I stopped planting bulbs

to say
that Robert Creeley died today.

[Terese Coe]

I have a question about a Creeley/Melville quote in today's NYTimes. I'll ask it here, since Alicia hasn't started the Musing on Mastery thread yet. Any takers on the meaning of the sentence in quotes?

Dinitia Smith writes:

"Visible truth," Mr. Creeley once wrote, quoting Melville, is "the apprehension of the absolute condition of present things." That was the goal of his own work - emotion compressed in short, sparse sentences and an emphasis on feeling.

I'm not sure whether I have a problem with the word "absolute" or the whole sentence sounds incredibly precarious.

Now that I reflect further, I suppose "absolute condition" is the problem for me. Then too, "present things" is singularly vague, not to mention annoying in context. Is it me or Melville? Or Creeley? Oh—it must be the Tibetan Buddhism! What think you?

[Robert J. Clawson]

I'm ABSOLUTELY delighted by this thread. Without knowing it existed, Clive and Alicia, I posted a Creeley poem on Mastery, jumped over here and found some of it, "The Skull," posted here.

Some of you may know that Creeley and I were buddies. I have what could be his last poem, but I can't post it until it appears in the forthcoming Ploughshares, approx April 15.

I live in West Acton, Massachusetts, and Creeley grew up here, about 100 yards from my house. I didn't find that out until about six years ago, when I first met him in Boston. He laughed that he'd returned and found none of his 60 books in our town' s library. So, I fixed that. Each year the Acton Memorial Library presents the Robert Creeley Award to a prominent American poet. We draw huge crowds for poetry: 150 is the smallest so far, 235 the largest. The poetry shelves now contain not only Creeley, but Charles Olsen and many of Creeley's friends and/or mentors.

This years winner is C. D. Wright, who reads May 5, 7:30 pm at the Acton Town Hall.

Those of us associated with him and this event, which he dearly loved, are hurting because he was such a great, vital, generous man. You just couldn't imagine him dying. When I post the poem, called, "Old Story," you'll catch a glimpse of that vitality.

There are many websites featuring his work. You might want to try this one for a starter: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poe...ey/creeley.htm

[Janet Kenny]

I hardly know his work at all but when a poet dies I am sad.
Janet

[J.A. Crider]

I recently started Ekbert Faas's bio of Creeley, but found it too labored and depressing to go on; in total contradistinction to the following by Carolyn Kizer.


Amusing Our Daughters
..... For Robert Creeley


We don’t lack people here on the Northern coast,
But they are people one meets, not people one cares for.
So I bundle my daughters into the car
And with my brother poets, go to visit you, brother.

Here come your guests! A swarm of strangers and children;
But the strangers write verses, the children are daughters like yours.
We bed down on mattresses, cots, roll up on the floor:
Outside, burly old fruit trees in mist and rain;
In every room, bundles asleep like larvae.

We waken and count our daughters. Otherwise, nothing happens.
You feed them sweet rolls and melon, drive them all to the zoo;
Patiently, patiently, ever the father, you answer their questions.
Later we eat again, drink, listen to poems.
Nothing occurs, though we are aware you have three daughters
Who last year had four. But even death becomes part of our ease:
Poems, parenthood, sorrow, all we have learned
From these, of tenderness, holds us together
In the center of life, entertaining daughters
By firelight, with cake and songs.

You, my brother, are a good and violent drinker,
Good at reciting short-line or long-line poems.
In time we will lose all our daughters, you and I,
Be temperate, venerable, content to stay in one place,
Sending our messages over the mountains and waters.


afer Po chu-I

[This message has been edited by J.A. Crider (edited April 01, 2005).]