In Memoriam Robert Creeley May 21, 1926 — March 30, 2005 (To return to the Conjunctions splash page, click here) DISTANCE IS TOO SMALL A MATTER TO BREAK THE BOND I read For Love in my seventh grade English class in Buffalo in the 60s, never imagining that the poet whose work I fell in love with as a young girl would become an abiding friend, a real force in my life. I’d just given birth to a second daughter after spending two years in Israel, and applied to the writing program at Buffalo because Robert Creeley taught there. The first day of class he walked in late wearing an old army jacket. I felt older than the other students, was paying a babysitter so I could be there, doubted in those first moments that I’d be coming back. When he started speaking it was about what he’d just heard on the car radio; he seemed amused, shy and aggressive at once. I was sure the class wasn’t for me. Then I must have started listening, resistances disappeared, and there was nothing I needed to hear more than the words he was speaking. He used class time to read Williams, Olson, Duncan, Levertov, all new to me — and arranged for each of us to meet him individually to discuss our work. I’d handed in a notebook of fragments, reflections on my swollen body, sleepless nights, unfinished thoughts. When I walked into his office I expected him to say, these aren’t poems. Instead he looked at me and said, you look good to me. Not flirtatious, just direct, warm, human — affirming my life and giving me courage — saying yes to the poems, but moreso, yes to me. It turned out he was going through a divorce and graciously accepted my invitation for dinner at our house which soon became a place he felt at home in, at ease with my husband Donald, and with our two small children underfoot. Of course I was deeply attracted to him, and he must have known how I felt from my meager poems. He loved the ‘big bashes’ my brothers held at our house with their friends and local bands. We celebrated his 50th birthday at one of them. At the end of another when we’d all had too much to drink and everyone had left but the five of us — Steve, Mike, Bob, Donald and I — we sat around the table, it was very late, very quiet, the girls asleep upstairs. Bob turned to Donald and suddenly uttered words so honest and direct that he clarified the air with them — acknowledging our connection, his friendship with Donald, his respect for the house, and, like the rare gentleman that he was, assuring that our relationship would endure. When Pen and Bob married, Donald and I were their witnesses before the judge; it was a double blessing and honor, to embrace these two friends of our heart, though the judge, seeing the two of them enter his chambers in scruffy clothes, assumed that we were the ones to be married. I was preparing to leave for Israel in 1978. I was miserable, torn; it was then to console me that Robert said “distance is too small a matter to break the bond.” Letters back and forth, our occasional visits to Buffalo and Maine, his two visits to Jerusalem, his endless gestures of generosity and kindness proved his words true. He invited me to read with him when my first book was published; all the Creeley fans who came that day to the Tapas café in Cambridge were forced to listen to my poems first. I am stunned now thinking of my extraordinary luck in having him in my life, in the “extreme unction” of his wisdom and friendship. This October I was traveling with son Udi, soon to finish his army service and interested in seeing some US schools. Bob picked us up at the Providence train station, youthful and energetic as ever. We stayed up late eating and drinking – Bob, Pen, Udi and I – as we watched a presidential debate on TV, we laughed, lamented the state of the world. It was a charmed visit. Three weeks ago Wednesday I was driving home from Tel Aviv with Udi. I’d been debating whether to attend a poetry event that evening where I’d have to see someone who does not speak to me. A few years back it was Bob I’d turned to for insight and direction to get through the original crisis, and as always he was there for me, clear and true, cutting through the hurt and insecurity to what was essential. I told Udi how Bob had helped me through disappointments, frustrations. We talked about our wonderful visit a few months earlier. Later that night back in Jerusalem I received word of Robert’s death. It must have occurred at the time we were talking about him. Here are two poems Robert Creeley wrote during his first visit to Jerusalem: A LITANY An old man doesn’t know his disposition nor argue its necessity. He sits waiting, remembering at best the other worlds of his desire. Into this extreme unction comes sun, comes any day of the week, and he moves, accordingly. 4/28/89 DON & LINDA’S HOUSE Place, light, windows look in, look out— pots, plants, green ground, roses, the flowers abound— This archaic language feels the insistence, the common ground. 4/30/89 — Linda Stern Zisquit Jerusalem Still sad a couple of weeks later at the passing of Robert Creeley, & reading the tributes, feeling much like many others, about the man & the poet, kindness generosity indeed, modesty, & a keenly lived life, with the sensitive lost eye that wept when it was talked about. Last meetings in Auckland in 1995 — at our house, at a lunch at The Black Crow in town, & at a farewell party in Ponsonby. Context: Coming from England, where American writing was unheard of in the 50s when I had been a student of Eng Lit. I was introduced to it in New Zealand in the early 70s by Wystan Curnow. By the middle of the decade I was enthusiastically reading Creeley & then heard him talk in a classroom & give a reading in Auckland, a big moment in my life. But didn’t get to meet him. In London in 1977-78, I had A Day Book in my hands day & night & was writing short wry Creeleyesque things. By 1982 I was married to Judi Stout and traveled with her in Europe & then stayed in New York for a couple of months. I had written to Bob saying we’d like to visit him in Buffalo. But got a letter back saying he was on leave in Albuquerque and if we were coming that way…so we diverted & went to amazing N.M. Remembering Bob’s account of his own visit to Basil Bunting, we took with us as a gift the bottle of single malt that we’d bought in Scotland for this occasion. We went straight into a lunch party arranged for Jonathan Williams’ visit. Then likewise, invited to participate in whatever was going on, would we care to go next day to Taos? With no sense of this being in any way risky, with the fairly calm older Bob Creeley, yes we’d like that. Just a warning from Pen, unnecessary as it turned out, to go steady on the beer at lunch-time. We got to Taos safely enough, intending to visit Larry Bell but he wasn’t home. There was six inches of mud in the streets. Bell’s secretary showed us round, after we’d taken off our shoes, & we looked at the expensive glass-treatment equipment he’d just purchased with a grant. I don’t recall having met before an artist with a secretary, or with equipment as high-tech & expensive as that before. Fine and dry, but some snow still lying about near Santa Fe. The driving was careful and skilful, only two things on his mind, the death of his friend Max Finstein – ‘the best con-man in the country’ in the poem ‘Oh Max’ — & Walter Chappell’s request for him to write ‘something ‘ for a forthcoming book of Walter’s photos. I had the feeling that Bob felt he was being used & was not happy about it. But we talked — mainly he talked — with a few questions from me all the way to Taos & back — the aftermath of the death of Barnet Newman, hearing the dealers & critics talking the same day about how the prices would go up, about Black Mountain & Charles Olson [my curiosity prompting that] about schizophrenic offspring which was common ground, about the decline in the N.M. water-table, as the result of various overuse, watering golf-courses, about the condition of the pueblos, — for a long-time I remembered almost all this conversation in some detail, but never wrote it down and it’s faded. & like everyone else says, a friendship was formed that persisted for a long time. There was just the one tricky moment. We had to stop off at Walter Chappell’s house, to settle the question of the ‘something’ to be written. It was in a remote place, at the foot of a red block of mountain, the oldest rocks in America, Bob told us. [The Sandia’s?] There was a plank bridge covered in snow that had to be crossed, in reverse. Judi & I got out & watched this nervy performance. Walter was making Krilian photos of plants, his ‘metaflora’ & made one while we were there, as a demonstration,. Bob & Walter had a little to-ing and fro-ing, but eventually there was agreement, and the ‘something’ was eventually written. The importance of Bob Creeley for writers in New Zealand is inestimable — many who had their sense of writing changed forever by his poems in the 60s, by his readings in 1976, his teaching Auckland University in 1995, and by many acts of generosity and friendship. —Tony Green      Almost fifty years ago Robert Creeley and I sat almost side by side at Harvard in a course on the eighteenth-century English novel. Not quite together, since the students were seated alphabetically and between us was one named Berlin. We never spoke — Creeley was much too forbidding-looking for me to attempt that, and perhaps I was too, but one of my keener lesser regrets is that we never sat down together and thrashed out the relative merits of Pamela and Joseph Andrews. At any rate, Creeley — we also participated in a poetry workshop where the future novelist John Hawkes was also a student — was a memorable presence on campus, though he didn't stay there long. Later on when one heard of him one realized that one knew one was going to all along.      I don't remember Creeley's poems in the workshop and wish I could forget my own, but we may well have realized then that we were on opposite sides of the poetic fence: me so European and maximalist, influenced by Auden and Stevens; he so American, with perhaps an Asian conciseness gleaned from Pound, stemming obviously from the Pound-Williams tradition to which Olson's presence would soon be added. Yet I've never been able to think of Creeley as a minimalist, which some have called him. If cramming as many possible things into the smallest space with no sign of strain or congestion is minimal, then maybe he is a minimalist. But what strikes me most about his poetry is a sense of richness and ripeness, beautifully contained in a vessel which was made to order by the circumstance of writing the poem. As he writes in "Some Place":      I resolved it, I      found in my life a      center and secured it. And lest we misinterpret his accuracy for pride, he adds farther on:      There is nothing I am      nothing not. A place      between, I am. I am      more than thought, less      than thought.      No one, I think, has ever stated what it is to be a poet more cogently and, yes, more succinctly than Robert Creeley. But his succinctness is like the unfettered flashing of a diamond. —John Ashbery, introducing Creeley in 1995 at the New School. AS EVER As ever, death.   Whenever, where.   But it's the drawn-together life we're finally muted by.   Must stand, regard as whole what was still partial   still under revision.   So it felt, so we thought. Then to hear sweep the scythe on grass still witherless and sweet [for R.C.] —Adrienne Rich April 2 2005 Since time withdrew from your body we can see your mind as sheer expanse. Like a country read about, seen from a distance, visited. It's without borders, nothingness making inroads. It contains the sun and the nothing new under it. There is nothing it is, nothing not. Its way is into form, as the body's was out of the room, the door, the hat, the chair, the fact. It remains, and yet we lament the end of a world. —Rosmarie Waldrop I am just one of the hundreds of poets Robert Creeley personally knew, personally touched and just one of thousands who were not poets, who took his poems in whole and deep. Within minutes of the fabulous Creeleys' move to Providence I was going around saying, Dig it. I wondered if he stayed in my earshot much longer he would not go around saying, goddamnit. But he wasn't profane, never anything but supremely gentle and graceful. He said lucid, significant things. He laughed readily. He quoted as if it were breathing—defining statements, words to live by—and the source could be a ballad, a relative, Pound, Olson, or literally, a passerby whose scrap of conversation he tuned in to. He absorbed the wisdom commonly available to humans and so aggressively ignored by most. He could instantly identify valuable information and give it shape and his very particular breath. He was a monologist who had become the ideally responsive listener. He was a compact, intense and all but omnipresent maker of poems whose command of a room was absolute whether he sat quietly in the background of the kitchen's hubbub, hands folded across his lap or appeared in a crowded hall as if out of a cloud. The rivet in his direction was involuntary. If you wanted his approval you needn't go begging, for not only did he never withhold, he volunteered it. He made his poetry livable, durable. He included us. You wanted to lean into him like a barn. Or draw your chair near his fire. You wanted to take his hand so everyone would see and would know, This is my friend. If Bob could make poetry his life, and he did, the rest of us doubters can be assured, poetry really matters. Oh man, we have to make good on what he gave us. We have to aim true to make our language bear up to his light. —C.D. Wright CREELEY SONG all that is lovely in words even if gone to pieces all that is lovely gone, all of it, for love and autobiography, lovely, the charm, as if I were writing this, all of it for love now in pieces all that is lovely echoes still in life & death still memory gardens open onto windows, lovely, and mirrors all that was lovely in a man —Peter Gizzi Just in the Morning in memoriam Robert Creeley, 1926-2005 There are no clouds. Pink or purple, in a terrible wind The locust flowers, having their own minds, Hang on. Sun's bright, March 30th, Not a cloud in the sky. But the ground is dark somehow, as though clouds were passing. Absent or present, death slips beneath. And above us? Who's to say there is no one Already building a fire in the cabin I can see from here, tilted awkwardly On the mountaintop beside only one tree? The wind seems not to reach that high. The smoke from the chimney goes straight up. —Donald Revell A Minor – in memory of Robert Creeley I enjoy the unfolding each time Paying attention to the space one’s in Its grammar emerging the minutia I can’t make up everything Pulls a scak or sack over one’s eyes See what I mean? Torture Becomes, as they say, problematic I wished to tell someone but couldn’t Until I found my way in Once there, the idea became clearer Their presence (those previously relocated) Made possible its articulation Putting the idea forward in their absence It appeared incapable of an assertion No context and therefore no content A lack of gravity, or a greater gravity Nothing could be made of it Invariably I would attempt to toss it (Discovering late that I had Its portability taunted me) An improvisation in which discipline Each time I sat down to work Needed to be counter-balanced (Subverted) by freedom, to break off When not needed, or could help Understand when people Didn’t understand the purpose in Approaching the conclusion To press out the last drop Each time I had to relearn They had been once beautiful, dangerous and Unstable – in the wrong time and in The wrong place But because they were on all sides wrong They were right for me —Andrew Levy Words for RC they were never enough they were very nearly the only things we had like erosions in the wind and the sun and rain were they enough? perhaps — — — — Heard him read a number of times, most significantly in an intimate setting at a workshop where the words came so quiet, so clear like an autumn day when the first leaves are falling. As Stein said of Matisse, "he was a great one"—now we can only go on as we are able, a tear welling over a slender smile. —Bill Higginson Remembering Robert Creeley Robert's downright humility amidst extraordinary accomplishment was remarkable. He and his wife spoke with me at length — in the parking lot — after a reading at Brown one evening. I introduced myself as a Brown undergraduate, and we reminisced about Buffalo (my native city). He spoke to me as if I were an old friend, and invited me to visit his office later that week to continue our conversation. Indeed, we met, and spent an hour throwing anecdotes about Buffalo's festivals and nuanced streets — and it was his genuine interest in my experiences that expanded his role to include "mentor," in addition to "professor." I often wondered if he was aware of his own esteem! Robert Creeley's generosity will be dearly missed. Though his seminar was officially limited in enrollment to 20, he offered to admit the nearly 50 of us who compacted into the room — many students sitting quite literally on top of each other, the classroom door fully obstructed. Professor Creeley sent out a personal note of condolence upon hearing of a death in my family. He offered to help me "in any way" — and meant it. He brought out the best in us: as writers, and as people. Robert Creeley — you're irreplaceable! May perpetual light shine upon you. —Sean M. Rumschik They say you died as the sun rose to greet the day I made a photograph at 7:00 am in the brilliant sunlight just before going to bed after sleeping on the couch all night Maybe at the same time maybe I went to sleep when you did maybe I caught the light just as you kissed it goodbye Too soon                     too soon                               my friend Please don’t fly away I want to reach up to grasp you find a tether a something to hold you to this earth a while longer Great rocks are weeping returning their salt to the sea                               waves swirl and eddy                               in confusion                                                                             echoes of your wisdom                                                                             clatter                                                                             in the trees The birds are calling your name For Robert Creeley —Susan Pease Porter March 30, 2005 Robert Creeley (1926-2005) Absolutely exemplary. Certainly these last ten years or so, a quality of sweetness, pleasure, and generosity. A life lived in and of words with absolute integrity. For me, personally, no more important poet, no one better able to show ways in words to make manifest the grace, pleasure, complexity, cadences, and play of mind at work. I met Bob in the late 1970s, at a Black Mountain College celebration at Warren Wilson College. We spent a couple of days in conversation; I interviewed Bob; I listened to him read. Much of our time together I asked him for information on the three-line stanzas that he developed, and what relationship his writing had to similar modes in Williams. Great fun witnessing a packed auditorium at his reading, only to have Bob tell stories and follow out a range of thoughts for forty-five minutes to an hour before he read the first poem. Many left before he read. They missed a superb reading, one that was absolutely continuous with the talking that preceded it. Yes, quite simply one of the greatest conversationalists of all time … At the time of that Black Mountain event, I knew only parts of what Creeley had written – mainly Words and For Love. From then until now, I have grown more and more familiar with the range of his writing – the poetry, yes, but also the essays. In fact, when I got news of Bob’s declining health, I was reading a new essay of his on Whitman’s poetry of old age (in a special issue of Virginia Quarterly Review celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of the first Leaves of Grass). In the mid-1990s, I gave a reading at Buffalo. Bob attended, and I had the pleasure of reading new poems (which became the book Days) which were very much based in what I had learned from his work. We spent the next morning, over pastry and coffee, sitting and talking, along with my good friend Yunte Huang. Bob’s generosity to Yunte is another story, but typical of Bob’s kindness to so many younger writers… Here, at Alabama, I had the pleasure of hosting Bob for a reading a couple of years ago. Again, a packed house. A superb reading, though Bob had to sit for most of the reading, as he did for the conversation/discussion the following day. That particular visit enhanced by the presence of Donald Revell (in residence for the semester), another poet deeply steeped in Bob’s life and writing. And again, Bob made time for a morning of coffee, pastry, and conversation. Last saw Bob at the Louis Zukofsky Centennial at Columbia this past fall. Some familiar anecdotes, and some unfamiliar. I’ve been quite moved by the increasingly emotionally open work of Bob’s last couple of books – Life & Death and If I were writing this. He seemed able to circle back, to realize the importance and vitality of late 19th century verse – a family tradition of popular poetry – in his own practice. Or, to make of Keats’ work such a central thing. We corresponded sporadically via e-mail. I would often send Bob a few poems, and his remarks were always appreciative. He blurbed a book of mine – an extended chapbook called As It Is (published by Mark Scroggins) – and was always supportive of my writing. What Bob showed was the pleasure and work of making one’s way in a writing life. It is rather amazing to think of how many of us have learned from his example. Yesterday, the day of Bob’s death, at the end of the day, I went with my son, Alan (16 years old), to Beulah Baptist Church – a black church on a hillside on the way home, a place that I’d often admired but where I’d never stopped. A modest graveyard with a cement angel of Memory leading the way up the dry, red clay hill. At the top of the hill, we walked around for a bit, sun streaming through the clouds. The wisteria now in bloom, we looked at the tombstones, stood beside one for “Pa Pa” Jones, and I read aloud several of Bob’s poems from Life & Death. Earlier in the day I’d been in touch with several others to whom Bob had been so important – Charles Bernstein, Yunte Huang, Joel Kuszai, Don Revell, Claudia Keelan, Norman Fischer, Tyrone Williams. Even at the time of Bob’s death, it’s hard not to bear in mind his favorite closing in correspondence: “Onward.” Without Bob here to be the figure of Onward, we must take what we have learned from him and be, in our writing and friendship and conversation and correspondence, that no longer singular figure of Onward. Hank Lazer March 31, 2005 * Here’s the e-mail I sent to Bob on Monday, March 28, 2005: Dear Bob, A gray cold day of spring break, giving way to sunny windy afternoon.   I spoke with Joel Kuszai mid-day, and learned some of your health difficulties.  And then heard from Charles Bernstein, a more optimistic version.  I'm simply writing to let you know I'm thinking of you.  And thinking with you.  Got in today's mail the latest issue of Virginia Quarterly Review — on Whitman, and your superb piece on Whitman's poetry of old age.  When I read at the Walt Whitman Center in Camden (several years ago, back when Alicia Askenase was in charge of the reading series), I visited Walt Whitman's house, and recognize it in the last photos.  For me, the determining feature of my early years of writing poetry was to have an especially close relationship with my four grandparents — all Russian Jews, all living close to us.  In the way that drugs & zen of the 1960s allowed it, I spent time with them, in their decay mental & physical, with a mixture of love, curiosity, and observation (rather than the disabling frustrations that I saw in my parents' relationship to their aging parents).  My poems began with telling their stories, my grandparents, and with learning (or trying to learn) something of the phenomenology of aging.  And thus, yes, a reading of Williams' later work and others, including, eventually Oppen. A rambling way, Bob, to say that you are on my mind these days, as your poetry and your essays and correspondence will always be. With much love, Hank * And a poem, from several years ago, very much with Creeley in mind, from an ongoing work, Portions. YOU so the old cabin leans “sit up” i said as if to someone i said it to you i always do if there were no one else if there were only you i would say “sit up” & think someone heard such is my sense the old cabin leans what is never passes away —Hank Lazer you can’t hold on to anyone that’s clear my hands are dry there’s a dead mouse in the kitchen this rainy april day the temperate disguises of the present then slipshod into a black world in which stars subsist bob no longer bob but he doesn’t care ‘I love the energy of irresolution,’ he ‘once’ said in his inclusiveness, gently smoking, smiling, joking, infinite bits of info ready to be recalled so where are they atoms that fly out into the universe you were already in — reattaching to those not yet born? where does everyone go? and such a singular one when you died I stood outside and felt you gone and felt you here since you were able to say what we long to hear one another say, each one, one by one, and art, then, had meaning not a usual one an actual one *************** ‘there’s nothing’ that’s a thought I had in my head is the world empty now you’re dead or full, containing all that one can live in or is that instead —Ruth Lepson WE GO TO OUR DEATHS IN SILENCE           For Creeley           Poetes, poein—maker, author, poet We have a carpenter to build our homes, a farmer to grow our crops, a doctor to cure our ills; we have a spinner to weave our cloth and a poet to make meaning from wood, beans, and mulberry trees. Our poet says what needs to be said. Our homes are filled with his books, our bellies with melodious delights, our singed imaginations sing, and our bodies are adorned and warm. —Martine Bellen A TIME ONE’S KEEPING           For Robert Creeley One day on in a world Without you in it, two Days on, three, your face At the center of which A mouth blows, four, A brilliant cloud of words, And, five, that hard naked Fact death arrives, six, Uninvited to the party And, seven, this small Dear world you loved And which, eight, loved you Back grows less specific And becomes, nine, ten, Some curious social edge Of that imagined permission And tomorrow and the next day And the day after that and Eleven, twelve, and so on And on and on and etcetera Goodbye —Mike Kelleher Thinking of Bob today, as I have been every day since March 30, I was leafing through his Chax chapbook YESTERDAYS (2002), when I came across these lines from the poem "Memory": I remember it was a urologist told me how to strip the remaining pee from my penis by using my finger's pressure just back of the balls, the prostate, then bringing it forward so that the last drops of it would go into the toilet, not onto my clothes. Still it's of necessity an imperfect solution. How stand at a public urinal seeing to play with oneself? Yet how not—if that's what it takes not to walk out, awkward, wide-legged, damp from the crotch down? I cannot believe age can be easy for anyone. On Golden Pond may be a pleasant picture of a lake and that general area of New Hampshire, but it's not true, any of it. Please, don't put, if you can help it, your loved ones in a care facility, they will only die there. Everyone's sick there. It's why they've come I don't know now what will or may happen to me. I don't feel any longer a simple person with a name. Could any poem of old age be more prescient, more tactful? It is a comfort to know that Bob did get his wish. —Marjorie Perloff This past week I have remembered two gifts (among so many!) given me by Bob Creeley. The first was in 1984. I was just finishing an undergrad degree in English at SUNY-Buffalo and had been accepted into the Creative Writing Program at CU-Boulder to start in the Fall. Before leaving, I was in the audience to see Bob do a reading at Central Park Grill in Buffalo. He arrived at the last poem of the evening, "Fort Collins Remembered," and said, "This one's dedicated to Ted Pelton, who's just about to go out there." To be backed down the road by long view of life's imponderable echo of time spent car's blown motor town on edge of wherever fifty bucks you're lucky It's too much to say that the moment changed my life - but, perhaps, in some way, it did. It made me feel like I was somebody important - Creeley himself had called attention to me from the stage! I was 22 years old. Next, 2001. I am back in Buffalo to live for the third time, entering a downtown cinema to see Once Upon a Time in the West as part of the UB Film Series, when who should enter at the same time but Bob. Penelope in New Zealand, he's on his own for the week. We chit-chat on line to get a ticket. "Do you mind the company?" I finally ask him. "I'd like the company," he says. We sit through the movie, munching popcorn, wisecracking. At the climactic scene, where Henry Fonda has a noose around his neck and Charles Bronson, taunting, sticks a harmonica between his teeth, Creeley nudges me and says, "Bob Dylan." Afterwards, he says, "So many propositions." When I get home I write down everything. "Words / now / forever" ("Oh Max"). Thanks, Bob — I'll miss you — —Ted Pelton A spur of encouragement protects the mind from despairing and there is true redemption in it. For it occupies a seat in the sublime cycle. The spell of his life communicated itself to a thousand objects and the poems became their measure. His reciprocity was always treasured. His absence focuses his essence—the Power of words to hold us. Captive. —Pam Rehm I was a student of Creeley's at Buffalo in the Eighties, after doing undergrad degree at Storrs in the previous decade, including an Olson class with George Butterick, who brought Bob one time to read in a packed library lounge, probably two to three hundred students standing, sitting on tables and floor, the place literally jumping and Creeley quite casually perched on a long wooden library table. I'll always remember the image of him hoisting a pitcher of water and taking a mighty slug, like Errol Flynn playing one of his pirate roles, and my being impressed with such a gesture in a somber old room with oil paintings of long-dead deans, and thinking: that, indeed, is a poet! Many fond memories since, too many to recall. His many kindnesses, like the time I was worried about slacking off with school work during a big TA unionization drive, and Bob said not to worry, that I was one of the few people doing anything to help these days. Or the time he came to judge a "visible words" art exhibition at the school I teach at now, and noticed out of the corner of his eye a wonderful piece the judges had ignored, mostly due to its low-angle placement near a radiator. Or his gallant efforts time and time again to help me along. Or writing a blurb for my poetry book last winter, when he easily could have put me off. Most of all, the wry humor, the smile that could be no one else's. For R.C. From one man, many worlds one for each of us and plenty to go around & around orbit round this ol’ town they call Parnassus, or Elysium, or Birdland, I don’t know— Pass along another song, Mister Bob, the night’s still young and there’s nowhere else but here —John Roche Avon, NY Robert Creeley has always had a strong influence on me. I loved his readings here in San Francisco. What makes him great is that he never repeated himself; he was always moving forward, always new. Here's a poem I wrote ca. 1969— ROBERT CREELEY Form favors yr face one eyed ultimateness at all ranges broken and unbroken lines of mountains— this: is say something on size, on the poet who: by saying something says so much . —Richard Tagett THE WORD i.m. Robert Creeley The word winks in travels briefly and is not again unless fed from another invisible source then it adheres to lordly carbon one measurable moment assumes your name —Erling Friis-Baastad Robert Creeley †2005 I remember how his approval—of a poem, for instance—was to say simply (always simply) that it—the poem, whatever—was there; his expression of ultimate worth: There it is. He seemed to be painfully aware that our grasp of the world is uncertain, our own selves unclear. His solution was to move on, forward ("Drive, he said..."), Olson's Figure of Outward. From tenuous circumstances and time's indirections, he formed some remarkably solid poems. Look in his books: there they are. —Keith Waldrop Untitled I too lived in arcadia in a house made of straw a gutter world of kindness The poet's secret is nothing to lose How fierce the life projects into a line or is it the other way rain falling upward You couldn't pay for nights like this Virgil on the wire the brass of all these things just walking up the stairs Man, what dignity to know who you are and still live among us of insufficient word, the world: you owned it, owned as in confessed, owned up, you said, it's me, said "I know the man," said it is I, said it is me. —Elizabeth Willis I was just a stupid kid,   a freshman,     when John Ciardi came to Tulane to read a few poems. I wound up     at the event because he edited some fancy magazine at the time        and I had the hots for the magazine. But the man fooled us,        told us he was going to read us a poem that none of us would understand,     that he didn't understand,        and the only way to deal with it was to resonate.                             Resonate, I liked that word. And then Ciardi started to read    something by still another guy       I'd never heard of,              stupid kid that I was. He cleared his throat, began,    As I sd to my/friend,because I am always talking,-    John, I/sd . . . I left the room stunned, inhaled the cool air,   sat on concrete steps and, I guess,           resonated,               stupid kid that I was. Yesterday I read the poem to a group of students,    said, you're about to hear something          you'll never understand . . . —Louis Gallo I am one of the many who were moved profoundly by For Love, back in the '60s, and by the many wonderful volumes of poetry that followed, also by the under-appreciated fiction. Each new volume was an event. We waited for it — the way we waited for a new Dylan album! His style influenced everything I wrote and thought. I went on to grad school at SUNY Buffalo in part because Creeley was there. As it happened, he wasn't there every semester, and neither was I, so I didn't actually get to meet him until I was a few years into the program — and by that time, my interests had changed. But I remember some classes I sat in on, a reading or two — and catching him in the hallway of that strange quonset hut that used to house the english dept back then and talking with him about who knows what? Wittgenstein, I think! Years later, I was the books editor here in RI at the Providence Journal, and Creeley came to do a reading. I wrote an advance - interviewed him by phone. He was great — I had a tape going. And for part of the story, it's probably in the Journal archives somewhere, I just quoted verbatim to give readers a sense of how this man thought and spoke. Nobody else spoke like him ever! We talked for a while after the reading, and it was obvious what a kind and generous man he was, how devoted to his craft, how interested in others. He sent me a really great post card afterwards, when he read the story I'd written. Very few writers take the time to do that. I'm sorry I never heard him read in recent years, but the words live on. —Elliot Krieger That spring thing. The week that Robert died the weather changed here and the season seemed to go in reverse. On this 2000ft above sea-level exposed ridge in the North Pennine Hills, a slow spring reverts to snow blown in from the north. I have known Creeley since I was 18 and he became a rock in my life, a loyal tender loving friend—a beautiful older brother. On my rare trips to America Bob would always arrange a reading and be there to meet me at the station, or the airport, and would have the cheque to hand which he'd pass over a few minutes later as we drove to the venue or his home. The last time, in October 2004, was no exception, but when we came into the station concourse he was seated and took noticeably longer to rise and offer that warm brotherly hug of a greeting. His breathing was clearly a problem. It meant we had to walk more slowly and climbing stairs was visibly a problem for him. Brown University was my first reading on that trip and when we returned to the east coast five weeks later my son and I took the train out from Cambridge to Rhode Island to spend our last day in America with Robert and Penelope. As always the talk was of family, and mutual friends that I'd just seen in Buffalo, San Francisco, Boulder, Chicago, New York, back in the UK—and his pleasure at being able to teach until he was 83. Penny drove us out to the water's edge and we ate a fish lunch then walked though autumnal woods. We talked of a strategy to get me back to the states so we could be closer and spend more time together. That was my hope. And he gave thought to how he might get to attend an 'opera' for which I was writing a libretto. I first met him when he came to read at the Morden Tower in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1965, and came to love him. We spent that day with Basil Bunting at whose home I'd read Creeley's poems and seen copies of The Black Mountain Review—but to meet the man and hear that distinct human voice deliver the poems with a tender humanity and humor opened up such vistas. And then to hear him and Bunting talk the talk and all of us getting drunk together over a few days was pure joy—an occasion that we happily repeated on many other occasions. His next gig was at Durham University and I just wanted to hang out with him for as long as possible so we traveled together to Durham on a British Rail train. When my father died, a year before Creeley's visit, I found an old watch amongst his meager possessions that I treasured—but I felt such a bonding with Bob that I gave it to him. He gave me his own copy of Desert Music by William Carlos Williams and on his return to America sent three books: the collected Walt Whitman, Olson's The Maximus Poems and WCW's Paterson in which he wrote—"'right or wrong' this is the 'problem'". Part of his inscription in the Whitman reads: "as Louis Zukofsky says—his Shil King-." The Desert Music has "Creeley-'54" in Williams's handwriting and in Bob's "for Tom with all faith—and love for the world that happens." You can't help but love a world in which a Robert Creeley happens. —Tom Pickard ONWARD in the direction of what is ahead towards the front so as to advance or move on forward One of Bob's favorite words. When I was a student at the University of Buffalo, he invited me to take his graduate seminar on Olson. I was 20. I came in ready to prove myself but soon realized I didn't have to. It was a class of conversation and story telling. After finishing school, I moved to Japan to teach English. Bob sent me off with a list of Japanese and expat writers to be in touch with. He asked me if I would do him a favor and go visit his old pal Cid Corman. Cid would consistently remind me about two things: always answer letters within 24 hours and that when they originally met, Bob was a 23 year old chicken farmer in New Hampshire. Cid, himself, passed in March last year. One of the first things he ever gave to me were these three poems he wrote for Bob. Onwards, —Jennifer Karmin THREE FOR R.C. by Cid Corman 1/ I asked God for the chance of making some poems - four or five - might endure to keep my kind kind. I have come to this end and find myself begun to make sense as what God has asked for too. 2/ Strange - of course. We are like that. As if the sun came to the sky to break word of the day with us - its day and ours. Or is that body of fire beyond our belief and only family? 3/ It isnt that I came too soon or you too late. The poem recognizes how distances relate and brings them nearer the ultimate state of being being: human in nature. Creeley has entered the roundhouse between conception & absence, where the snake-knotted breasts dwell, stone vehicle in which a life's experience is the grain in snake-knotted breasts, "serpent skirt"  they call her, she wears her breasts knotted about her pubis, the most intense layering we know,   fugal roundhouse, or mound trough,   or moon flower,   blessed instability: he has left you for a stability standardized by air.  Knotted about her pubis, the black fangs in her breasts, twisted about her pubis,   no thought sharp enough to cut this suckling sabrework,   the child's desire to penetrate the mother has come true,   didn't he know that to have her was to die?    No one has smashed her pinocchios, no one has been able to induct her venom & piss it out before it enters Okeanos,   our binder,   our earth adherence,   self-knotted Nile of the anti-time in which we curl, grub with a billion eyes, —O everyman we are,   as we reach are not,   atonal orifice,   goodbye! 29 March 2005, zone of closure —Clayton Eshleman He came to Madrid in 1992, invited by José Parreño and myself, to read at the Círculo de Bellas Artes. I remember what a huge deal it was for me—26 then—to meet him. He spent two days here, and we kept in touch until now. He was here later, for a talk, and earlier, as you all know, in Mallorca. During the big exhibit that the Nacional Museum of Modern Art in Madrid (Reina Sofia) did of Black Mountain College a few years ago, you got off the elevator and the first thing you saw was a fine copy of this fantastic picture Jonathan Williams did of him sailing in the coast of Mallorca. A young woman friend who was with me and did not know him at all exclaimed: "que tío más guapo" [What a good looking dude!]. Friends from Ardora, a small literary press,then published "Life & Death" in Spanish, translated by Alan Smith (who teaches at Boston College). Also, there is a portrait of him with Robert Duncan by Ronald Kitaj at another huge museum in Madrid, The Thyseen Collection. He was sweet, quick at responding, careful and loving. We shared a great friend, French photographer Bernard Plossu. Wrote some of the best and most penetrating love poems I have read. Adios, un abrazo, compañero. —Nacho Fernández Madrid, April 7th. Sonnet for Robert Creeley Remembering again Robert Creeley, and that in our group-remembering, albeit conjuring Robert Creeley, He is survived by us, by our remembering, in addition, to and certainly not excluding recordings, photographs, footage. And the sad fact that the apple on the table's not there, becomes less sad while seeing and hearing that room again via Some other sense of things—that the apple's been eaten, but is still there and in recognizable fashion— Red and dangling in the interior air, Maine or Colorado Friendship Road Waldoboro Lincoln School gymnasium Or anywhere really, up or down, then or maybe earlier this road that road this road that road— in the end in the middle in the beginning a warm conversation with a poet, a polite knowing man. After hearing of Creeley's passing, I ran into Anselm & Jane on the hill who had dinner with Bob just "good friday." Last week's test results showed the cancer he's had traces of for the last ten years didn't register. Not a threat. They all sighed with relief. But bronchitis in a 78 yr old songman ain't a good thing, especially one with respiratory problems already. And worse still for a good son of New England to die in Odessa, Texas. Spent some time last night in Creeley's Contexts of Poetry: Interviews 1961-1971 edited by Donald Allen, Four Seasons, 1973. HIGHLY RECOMMEND. And checked out Tom Clark's Robert Creeley and the Genius of the American Common Place. A little off the beaten path of The Collected Essays which seem prerequisite. I enjoy these reads so much more than say his later verse, unless he was reading it to me. And while we won't again witness the man's hand running over his left ear, a cigarette in the other hand, a few pages in between, reading to us, there are great recordings out there of Robert Creeley's "particularity." The ones Paul Blackburn did, Naropa's Audio Archive, surely Buffalo. Perhaps given the volume of work he produced, news of Robert Creeley's death can be plausibly denied for quite a while. In fact, maybe we could organize the first Pan-american Denial Conference! Got to pick up our woe and go. —Joseph Richey Boulder, Colorado Driving Home After the Creeley Reading down puddled road peeking past stubborn drops on windshield remembering why we do it: for the world he gives us the world we hope we might give back one old man in his chair, his heart and mind in time, still strong his hands and feet his breath— a constant song so long the road back home where one belongs a song so long old friend so long —Jack Greene Naropa 2001 To the world, he was a great poet. To me, he was that as well as my professor. He offered a class here at Brown University entitled "That Old New American Poetry," and I enrolled in it just this past fall, curious to learn from the poet who had undoubtedly shaped much of today's modern poetry. I found him engaging, insightful, and incredibly personable. I'd visit his office to talk prose, poetry, and politics, and he was always willing to discuss and encourage my growing interests writing as well as the material he provided for class. I wrote a term paper on Denise Levertov's poem, "Merritt Parkway," and he loved it, and I couldn't help but feel some sense of accomplishment in that one of America's greatest poets had actually heard and listened and understood what I had to say in the way that I wanted to say it. As a student, that was all I could ask for. As a poet, it was all I could dream of. I was truly saddened to hear of his death, and I leave my best wishes with his family. —Janina DeJesus CREELEY'S LAST READING I was at the reading which seems to have been Bob's last, in the balcony of the University of Virginia bookstore in Charlottesville in late March. I had heard him at Orono in July, where he also told anecdotes, but this was different. For one thing, he had an oxygen tank on the floor at his feet and couldn't use the podium—the tube just reached to his nose when he sat on a table with his blue-jeaned legs dangling youthfully down. The contrast between the spryness of his body (and mind) and his labored breathing through the tube was poignant. He said he had had to breathe through the tube since February. When I saw how much weaker he looked than he had in July, I was worried—it seemed as if the downward curve was pretty steep. He read from the latest book, which includes numerous poems in heroic couplets. At one point he said, "the rhyme grows more obvious in these late poems—but it was always there; people just didn't see it." The poems are raw and honest and focus on life-death issues, and he spoke in the same vein between poems. It was very intense, direct, honest, almost childlike, the voice and the words of someone with nothing to lose. He said some very simple things that felt like the truest things one had heard in a long time, things like, "there has been so much war and pain during the last century. We need to learn how to be kind; kindness is what makes us human." The audience was, I think, pretty much awed; there was deep silence. Afterwards I was so struck I was almost in tears, and many of those with whom I shared glances had the same stricken look. In retrospect, I recognize the feeling palpable in that place after his reading as the death-feeling, the same feeling there was in the house when my father was dying, that larger-than-life bitter flavor of simplicity and depth. After the reading he signed books graciously for a long line of people. I waited till they were all through to speak with him; I had just moved to Maine, a place we loved in common and had talked about before, and I wanted to share that. He signed my books very carefully, deliberately placing a black dot in the upper-left hand box of four boxes in the publisher's logo on one title page. Then we talked for a long time, me awkwardly half-kneeling in front of the book-table. We talked about Maine, and, since he was staying in Marfa, Texas, about the minimalist sculpture of my ex-brother-in-law Donald Judd. He was scathing about the inhumanity he saw in Judd's metal boxes, how incongruous he felt they were in the desert landscape, and we both shared our visceral response at their lack of effort to harmonize or blend in. I asked him how he understood Judd's intentions, and he said something very helpful, which cleared up a question that had burdened me for a long time: he said he thought of it as a belated Romantic attempt to assert human presence. After we discussed various other things, we talked about how we would see each other in Maine in the summer. I remember feeling that it might not happen. We said goodbye, but I turned back on a very strong impulse to ask him about one more thing rather than putting it off: I asked him about Robert Duncan. He told me movingly about Duncan's warmth, compassion—told about how once he had been walking with Duncan and telling him about problems with his marriage, and looked over to see tears on Duncan's face. You would have liked him, he said. He looked tired. We touched hands again. "Till Maine," he said. I am now so glad I turned back. I'm also glad that last July in Orono, I spoke with him about something even more urgent I wanted to discuss before it was too late. I mentioned to him how people were continually quoting as a truism only the first half of his famous dictum, "Form is nothing more than an extension of content, and content nothing more than an extension of form." He was very disturbed by this and said that the quote was not meaningful without both halves. I asked him if he would send me an email stating this so that I would have it in writing from him, and could quote it honestly/accurately, and he told me that in fact, he had just put it in writing in a recent interview. Soon after he sent me this email: Dear Annie, Now I hear you've taken the job, which is terrific for "our side." Thinking of that "form" business, what I was thinking of then was this comment in interview with Leonard Schwartz: http://jacketmagazine.com/25/creeley-iv.html It's there pretty much at the beginning. I can feel fall today, and somehow that's a pleasure — just the sharpness of air and the extrardinary specificness of color. Ah well! Again congratulations and all best, Bob This is the quote from the interview he was referring to: RC: Well, content is never more than an extension of form and form is never more than an extension of content. They sort of go together is the absolute point. It's really hard to think of one without the other; in fact, I don't think it's possible. That's it. Ah well! —Annie Finch I was lucky to grow up in a house where Creeley was often quoted— "She was the lovely stranger/ who married the forest ranger/ the duck and the dogs/ and never was seen again"— and first assimilated For Love, Words, Pieces as an adolescent, pulled from my parents' shelves. Words are pleasure. All words. It was too early to understand the emotion of these poems of loving and hurting: "words full// of holes/ aching," though I think I could follow "Speech/ is a mouth." In any case, I was reciting Creeley's poems to girls from the beginning. I finally met Robert Creeley in Paris in '93 or '94, reading at the Village Voice Bookstore (where I pressed him for details on publishing Blackburn's Proensa, as I was writing on it at the time, and he gratefully discussed the various history of Divers Press), saw him again at Allen Ginsberg's funeral in '97 at the Shambhala Center in NYC (and now instead of loving and hating grief appeared the major theme: the pain-stricken look on Creeley's face moved me to write him a long letter), and came to study with him at SUNY Buffalo in '98. (He's more or less the reason I came to Buffalo— as he stuck his phone number in my pocket in Paris and suggested I give it a thought.) Creeley invited us right into that great family of his. He and his wife Penny (one of the most brilliant people ever) took a shine to my partner Isabelle, and her work, and bought several of her paintings. They have been great supporters (and, as noted many times over here, we were just two of literally hundreds the Creeleys personally touched). Creeley's tangible acts of friendship never flagged. His putting me in touch with vital contemporaries like Ben Friedlander or Nick Lawrence, or introducing me to his own, were perhaps the most lasting of such acts. Multiplying such acts by the number of poets for whom Creeley was similarly useful, one must ask: inside, around and beyond the company of words that have been with one's care (for words), pretty much from the start, would one know half the poets one does without Creeley? Along with colleagues here, such as Graham Foust, Linda Russo, Tim Shaner and others, I was lucky to attend Creeley's last graduate seminar at SUNY Buffalo, titled Poetry's Public, in the Spring of 1999. We read and discussed Eric Havelock's The Muse Learns to Write, Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory, Robert von Hallberg's American Poetry and Culture 1945-1980, Jack Spicer's The House That Jack Built: Collected Lectures (ed. Peter Gizzi), Robert Duncan's "The Truth and Life of Myth" and poetry by Hart Crane, Jack Spicer and John Wieners, amongst others. Creeley told a lot of stories about the war, remembered flying in a military transport: "men, lads, boys— the whole trip sitting tidily in their seats in a Sterling bomber." The war was on in Kosovo and there was a constant argument about poetry's agency. Mostly, though, I remember being fascinated with Creeley's phrases and speech patterns, as his stories unfolded, and I noted: 2/22/99 small local decisive books in a classic uptown scene the lobster, the sea, etc. everyone's having a good time Stephen King's Paterson comes onstage to strip an expressionist talker clocked in at nine hours a constant compaction voice as an individual documenting experience making a proper part in the linguistic drift more "ruminative" as a quondam teacher 3/1/99 McClure's gopher tantrums instinct action or enactment old time distractions men, lads, boys—the whole trip sitting tidily in their seats in a Sterling bomber questioning legitimacy gave austere and abiding love to places like factories his rhythms are gross lying under father's piano and put war away with time —can yuppies be real? I'll never forget Creeley's reading, for this seminar, of Hart Crane's "Island Quarry": "Square sheets— they saw the marble into/ Flat slabs there at the marble quarry/ At the turning of the road around the roots of the mountain . . ." Nor his reading of Ginsberg's late poem "Five A.M." (from the just-published Death & Fame), his voice breaking on the closing lines: "too heavy for this lightness lifts the brain into blue sky/ at May dawn when birds start singing on East 12th street—/ Where does it come from, where does it go forever?" Though his presence on campus in the last couple of years was minimal, Creeley's contact with students who sought him out—especially undergraduates—was extraordinary. It was hard to get him to come out for graduate student readings, but often Creeley would be seen at the reading of a 19 or 20 year-old protegé. He was especially supportive of the young (homegrown) Buffalo poets. (One of my favorite projects of his is the email correspondence he carried out with students at Buffalo's City Honors High School, Day Book of a Virtual Poet.) Many students of mine recounted fruitful studies with him. Or I would meet people randomly that he had taught: a young waitress who told me she had done her senior thesis with Creeley, a bartender who had read Williams with Creeley in the seventies. The word of Creeley's I keep coming back to is "use"—when Creeley indicated he'd found one's work "useful," it was high praise . . . Creeley insisted on the use of poetry, as poetry . . . that it have meaning in life. The generosity and the quality of the tributes appearing here and elsewhere testify to that use. —Jonathan Skinner My favorite Bob thing is an explanation he gave once about why he was a poet. It was something to the effect that one night I think when he was in college he found himself on some other street and he decided to live his life there. I met Bob when I was ten seconds in New York and had just been reading For Love over and over. He was the perfect poet then and still is. He was reading at the West End bar and I think he had just come back from Australia and Pen was there too. I was so impressed that he had a cool young wife. I think her and I had the same worker caps on but this might just be my imagination. I just remembered we drank many mugs of beer and you could just talk to him. I could hardly understand what he was saying but I just loved it. I was very proud of the fact we had the same home town—that I grew up in the town he was born in at least and his dad had been a doctor at my local hospital. These things of course had occurred in entirely different times but it didn't matter at all to either of us. Wonderfully he was pleased with these details too and doted on such facts as much as I did. Everybody's mentioning it, but Bob was so generous. To send your book to him (when you were a kid) and get a response was to be part of a jewel, because Creeley caught you and sent something back, a postcard, a word. Of course there's no way to replace him but it just seems to occur to me to give back more and not get so weighed down by the day. I had not seen or spoken to Bob in more than a couple of years—he was here and I didn't even know and had already been feeling foolish because he asked me back then for my bratty Robert Lowell poem for a piece he was writing for the Harvard Review and I was so happy that he had written that I forgot to respond. I just kept missing him and imagining going to like P-town this summer to say hello and hear him read and now no more. To see Bob Creeley was to encounter this guy with great silent laughing eyes. I remember him one night a million years ago reading at St. Marks and he was rambling on about the moon and women and oil spills and maybe we didn't have to clean it up, maybe it's okay. A poet can talk, I thought. He had the gift. Love —Eileen Myles At Naropa University's 6 April memorial for Robert Creeley: When I think of our dear departed friend, colleague, mentor, teacher, Robert Creeley, three things in particular come to mind. The first is years ago now. I am a student, here, at Naropa. It is the Summer Writing Program. I have been assigned to assist Robert. Creeley. I feel like I have hit the jackpot, won the quick pick, blasted off: I'm Creeley's assistant. This is the guy. I've lately been wrestling with the extraordinary prose, trying to imitate it, certainly, but mainly just doing my best to keep my head above water in the face of its high-octane nuance, its intricate subtlety, its flatout brilliance. I'm Creeley's assistant. I do my best to assist. This doesn't amount to much. Robert Creeley, the Creeley I encountered that week, was not a guy who needed a tremendous amount of assistance. In fact, characteristically, he almost immediately turned the tables on me: had me over to his apartment for breakfast, had me bring pastries and coffee and sat there with me in his pyjamas (Robert Creeley in his pyjamas!) and we talked, talked and talked, a conversation punctuated by Creeley asking what he could do to help me, what he could do to get me farther down the road I was just starting on. I don't remember what I said. It doesn't matter what I said. Simply by asking, Robert Creeley asking, he had just knocked me about 10 miles farther along. The second is recent, year before last, again at Naropa before Bob's yearly reading, his visit to this community. We were sitting together and chatting, about what he had in the works, the great late poetry, then about what I had, a new book, a copy of which I had in hand to give him, to put in his hands. He took it. Graciously. No doubt around the millionth such book put into his hands. Asked me questions about it. Admired the cover. The quality of the paper. Spoke about the good things Coffee House was doing. I responded by slipping into the easy posturing of self-deprecation. Said it was something he could read on the plane, buzz through, maybe he already had too much to carry, etc. He responded to this by looking me in the eye, still smiling but deadly serious, and saying, "Be serious," this is your book, "Be serious," this is what it's all about. The last is 10 years ago, Paris. I've been living there. I've just lost For Love on the metro. Now I'm reading Pieces. Everywhere I go I've got it. I go all over the place. I'm meant to be attending classes but instead I'm reading Pieces, digging it, getting my head blown off every time I open it. If you haven't, check it out, read it. I open it on the Place Saint Michel, sitting on the edge of the fountain. It's crowded, a lovely day in Spring, pigeons everywhere, the fountain playing behind me, occasionally I get splashed. Someone is going around interviewing people with a video camera. There are plenty of other people to interview. Still, he spots me.    Trying as hard as I can to vanish into Pieces, into Creeley's complex patterns, his brain boggling textures, basically I've hardly got any head left. But no luck. The guy makes a beeline for me. He asks a slightly asinine question or two. But he's not pushy and he has a kind, smart face and after the slightly asinine questions he asks me what I'm reading. Pieces, I say. C'est un livre de Robert Creeley. Ah, Creeley, he says. I look up at him, curious. Creeley, c'est un des grands, he says. Yeah, I think, yeah, I say to him then to myself, returning to Pieces when the interview is over, Robert Creeley, one of the greats. —Laird Hunt Reached For           for Robert Creeley But also it was shared in this vagrancy, the combination of what was pirated to be enough, owned by all, a demand for it, this urgent stowage kept for relief —Jordan Stempleman News travels slow to this part of the world (Thailand), so I only found out about Creeley's death today. I was just getting over the fact that Philip Lamantia has left the planet... They both in their own way were of significance to me. I first encountered Creeley's "Daybook" in a Fresno, California bookshop in '88 (I think). Didn't know what to make of it at the time, but it was there to confound me into wanting to unravel the taught spiral of poetry... Here's a poem for Creeley: Black Book We imagine what might never be in chapters of ruins on a river isle An era of speaking in tongues of ash and ocean mislabeled as faded lure space all too spaced The wind all too winded blows empty figures letters and landscapes their depths seen in the snow their hands joined in a radii of sound —Brian Lucas Two years ago, almost to the day, we stood, Penelope, Bob and i on St. Margaret Island in the Danube halfway between Pest and Buda, when three cranes flew our way, north to south, three ancient sages' souls, here, I sd, here for us as greeting heavens' reflection here for your sake, Bob, and yours, Penelope, and mine, those cranes Bob still flying —John Batki Letter to Don & Claudia, the Day After Creeley's Death Do you remember? I came to you utterly desolate, after driving ten hours, and you took me in. It was the first time I had met you, Claudia, or was that earlier, in Denver? You know how it is about time. But now, waking early from a bad dream, I think of you both so sorrowful but together with the kids, and I too seeking the way to mourn. There at the lake, watching for that eagle which never came, I thought of how things are held together, and how they fall apart. He understood that better than anyone else in this business, and so I went not to him (having gone to him last night of course) but to Williams, as he would have advised. I read "The Crimson Cyclamen," seeing once again the impossible construction, the balances, juggling, the angles thrust through space-time, spun perfect out of eye and ear, the science of it that one must study while opening oneself to the feel. Then, more explicit in pathos but in every way equal in the moves, the Elegy for Lawrence, whom he loved nearly as well. And it chilled me, for it was just this season, "this / half cold half season- / before trees are in leaf and tufted grass stars / unevenly the bare ground." Don, you knew him much better than I: it should come as no surprise that I see now how long his conversation was with death. Yes, certainly, in "Mazatlán: Sea," that terrible gematria of "Four." But later, I mean Later, "Bresson's Movies," "Still Too Young," "Sad Advice"—a run of them! and so on. More so even than Bronk, who claimed never to understand him, but whom Bob honored nonetheless. And that was him, wasn't it? All those "ladies"! Truer for him than for Duncan even, the young knight errant, adopting a kind of beat gentility that he made absolutely his own. A company indeed, this knightly band, aggressive in its de- ference but utterly thoughtful as it picks through things to find the abstract music that we cannot live without. My dears, this will be one hell of a day, sleep deprived, running from one errand to the next. I have a student, deep into jazz, poetry and philosophy, and we're set to talk about Mackey this afternoon. They don't come along like that too often now. The music, he said. Thinking of you in the desert. —Norman Finkelstein From Edge & Fold XLIX (For Robert Creeley) never less than present and close to the rain summer's in a rush to wet its lips again something calls us home through the dim evening a pair of hedge clippers for those of us who dream the exhaustions of infinity will never touch us now only gods die and the poor love it well what has always been remains to be seen memory's last station too many travelers —Paul Hoover Ah, here's an oldie, from 1966? 67? the time we first met, in London. Sent it to him on a post card. He told me he liked it. FOR THE SEA- SONS AND DAUGHTERS WE ALL ARE sea    the ships going out coming in passing by. carry and hold. there are lights in the harbors. going on going out, going on. hold the living, carry the dead. see    the lights lead us on, to friends and loves: hold on    take care keep warm fall     softly if and when. I loved the poet. I loved the man. I'll miss him the rest of my days. —Anselm Hollo Last April 2004 I wrote about Robert Creeley's frank and robust collection, If I were writing this. The book is a moving engagement with friends, family (persons he has loved — both dead and alive), and fragments of literature as it lives on through more literature. Though elegiac in mode, the book is affirming in Creeley's onward "do not go gently" way. At their most stirring the poems have an inviting gusto. In "Supper," for instance, Creeley writes: Days on the way, lawn's like a shorn head and all the chairs are put away again. Shovel it in. Eat for strength, for health. Eat for the hell of it, for yourself, for country and your mother. Eat what your little brother didn't. Be content with your lot and all you got. Be whatever they want. Shovel it in. At the time I was reading the new book, I found a passage from the introduction to Selected Writings of Charles Olson. Here Creeley writes: "We are not here involved with existentialism. Camus may speak of a world without appeal, but the system of discourse he makes use of is still demonstrably a closed one. What he seems most despairing about is that language cannot make sense of the world, that logic and classification do not lead to conclusions and value — but open only to the dilemma of experience itself." For Creeley, physical experience offers its own guide for the perplexed. As he puts it toward the end of "Conversion to Her": One cannot say, Be as women, be peaceful, then. The hole from which we came isn't metaphysical. The one to which we go is real. —Tom Devaney Some Thoughts: I was fortunate enough to spend three weeks with Robert Creeley in February; in a couple of conferences, in general conversations in the halls before and after our workshop. He was always ready to talk... about anything. And he could talk about anything. The first day of our workshop, I remember everyone in the room had that look on their faces that often reads: "wow he's coming through the door any second what do we say what do we do I can't wait this is so exciting..." Of course, when he came in he grabbed a seat, wiped his eyes, smiled, and immediately set off on a long talk about technology, computer and neat little speakers in check. After about forty minutes or so, he goes grinning, "So I guess we should talk about poetry..." I'll never forget another comment he made up front: "I've always sort of despised that part of workshops that immediately says we have to find something wrong with the poems... etc., dig it. Let's just talk." I timidly stayed after the class was over to talk with him. I was, of course, nervous, and I'll never really remember anything I said to him that day... though I think some brief discussion of "Paterson" came up. He was inviting to say the least, and the last day of the workshop (at a local art gallery) I remember him sitting on a couch while I stood listening. He looked up, patted the couch, and said "David, grab a seat." Yet again about five or six of us were off on another half-hour talk about the seemingly insignificant things in life that really, when you think about, tend to matter the most. Those simple conversations were moving for me to say the least. I would think: here is a man whose mind is of an extraordinary intellectual caliber, who has seen more in the human experience than anyone I've ever met, and yet... we pretty much hold to common matters when talking. I'd ask and he'd tell me something about Ginsberg or Robert Duncan like I was his neighbor. And why not? The idea of hero worship played no part in Creeley's daily mentality. Another day, he asked me to walk him to our classroom when an obviously intimidated fan approached him and asked, "Can I annoy you for a moment...?" We stopped and he sort of smiled, scratched his head, and suggested politely that the mention of "being annoyed" was the only thing that annoyed him. He didn't want to be "worshipped," he seemed merely to want hang out with people who liked to talk. And as much as I love everything he wrote, I love that trait just as much. I mean, let's face it... there are lots of inflated egos when it comes to being a poet, especially one so well known, but not once did I see anything remotely egotistical in Creeley. It means much to keep one's reputation from taking over amidst voices in constant praise to one who not only "made it," but "changed it." Part of his genius, I think, was remaining a poet who, quite simply, just loved poetry and the many things that play into it. An email he sent me a couple of weeks ago said: "I could sit in a bus station for hours just listening to people talk"... that's poetry in itself, I think, and I got from him that poems don't have to try to be great or ultimately profound... they just have to be words put down by someone who loves to put them down on a page. During workshops I found myself jotting down some of the things that he'd say nonchalantly. Along with the common "Dig it," "etc.," and "Anyhow onward," here are a few: "Truth is a consensus." "I have no idea specifically what poetry is but it's something like the ability to hear water in an empty pool." "The world is our physical lifetime." "Poetry is always a local art no matter how universal it is." "Try not to describe it, but if one can, somehow enter it." "There is no encompassing description..." "Digression to me is the life of writing." "There is no ordaining faction for poets." "If you're a poet you'll be one come hell or high water." "Your earlier question about what to do when writing just don't come is stay on the so-called job." Thank you RC. We miss you, —David Howell, Wilmington NC Call it the Creeley Concentrate. "I'm just trying to be in my life!" said with a chortling insistence at the Parish Hall doorway, St. Marks Poetry Project, probably 1970, the night Bob read with Jim Dine. The issue was whether or not to follow along to a late-night party in Brooklyn. In the walkway of the Varsity Apartments, Boulder 1977, with Allen Ginsberg, Bob and Penelope — Allen proposes we all go on to dinner at a nearby restaurant. I make apologies, dinner with wife and kids in our "dorm" room is on the table. "Ah, you can eat with them anytime," says Allen. Bob smiles, hand on Allen's shoulder, consoling: "Don't knock it." —Bill Berkson I only met Robert Creeley twice—once at a Jargon Society Board meeting at Buffalo, and once when he gave a reading here in North Carolina in conjunction with the In Company exhibition and catalog. During that time, a small handful of notes and emails crossed between us. My introduction to him at Buffalo was during a party after the Board meeting, and he kindly signed a number of books, including his UCal Selected which had just been published. Jonathan Williams introduced us and then left us to each other. We talked for only a short time and then others wanted to greet the master. Between our meetings Jargon published my book, Visions of Dame Kind, and other works came out. He always acknowledged them with a note of thanks, encouragement, and praise. When we met again in Greensboro in 2000 I didn't have to introduce myself. To my surprise, he recognized me immediately, saluting me as if we were old friends. Between 1991 and 2000, Cid Corman and I began corresponding. Anyone who knew Cid knew that he too, in a much different, but equally caring way took great pleasure in mentoring and sharing the life of poetry with others. Cid told me, at one point, of a serious financial situation in which he had found himself. I contacted Creeley and asked him if there was anything that could be done through the Academy of America Poets to help Cid. I don't know if that's where the help came from, but Cid confirmed to me that help did come from Creeley. I say this not to draw attention to myself or my work, but to further demonstrate the intimacy with which Robert Creeley welcomed all those he met—all those who shared demon verse with him. Others have already praised his line, his cunning words, through which so many of us have not only learned to write, but also to live. Whenever I think of poetic models I think of these by Creeley: "candle ? / behind the eyes" — "the darkness sur- / rounds us, what / can we do against / it" — "I had wanted a quiet testament / and I had wanted, among other things, / a song. / That was to be / of a like monotony", and — "If I had thought / one moment / to reorganize life / as a particular pattern, / to outwit distance, depth, / felt dark was myself / and looked out to me, I / presumed. It grew by itself." Robert Creeley, this poem's for you. In Memoriam: Robert Creeley Beyond the old cornfield a train Fox looks up—busy world I lift my bucket to the wintry stars Out falls emptiness and glass Mind bears it all away Somewhere order Disorder tastes of ripe cherries & wine Which way to nowhere Spring sun shows the easy way Right up through the trees —Jeffery Beam, Hillsborough, NC XXIII In Memoriam Robert Creeley, March 30, 2005 When death arrives, the earth is always flat, For there is an edge from which we fall, Never to be seen again in sunlight. We may Be glimpsed among the shadows of the moon, But that is more from love's insistence That we populate the darkness with our ghosts. You stated the inevitable, and the obvious, When you addressed your Mother in a poem, And told her you would follow, and now you have. But that you said it has such resonance in feeling. I grieve, but I take solace in the knowledge I will follow, Travelling the same path into the dark. With each day, We move closer to earth's edge, from which We must fall, but until we do, the moment is all. —Richard Nelson-Peszka In the spring of 1974 i took the all nite bus back to Buffalo from Port Authority...to defend my dissertation...it was a trip i had taken many times in the 5 yrs i spent as a grad student...i always tried to sit in the back 3 seats...where the motor hummed..but at least i could stretch out...wake/sleep/wake...435 miles to...2 long thwy hours out... Bob had stayed with us the season before...on a wknd trip to the city...which surprised me...we were close....but I was a student..& he was Bob...so i asked if i could stay with him...& he agreed... Dwntn Buf. at dawn...i had some breakfast...and waited for the Salvation Army to open...where i found for a quarter.... a pretty good copy of a 1st ed. of Williams "Sour Grapes" & some other books....up main st to the olde campus..where Bob was teaching a class...in one of those Trailer outposts... In his car...afterwards.. i showed him the book...& i knew he wanted it...he took it up..and wedged it in the windshield visor like a talisman...and he started to talk...& talk...& talk...till we got to where he was livin'..a plain clean working class apartment...where i'm sure he wrote the poem beginning "roof's peak is eye"... Bob talked...i listened & listened.....at one point...he spotted a speck of dust..and got down and cleaned it..which surprised me...as it surprised me the next day when i woke and he was fiddling quite ably with the toaster..he asked me if i wanted some food...i sd "no"...then sd i always say "no"...which means yes.. I finished the dissertation bizness...telling my advisor that i was too old (25) to rewrite it..and yes the footnotes were often wrong (i didn't tell him i'd made them up).. he & bob both signed off on it....those were the magic mushroom years... Back to Bob...and more talk..at one point abt the flowers in the room...then about how he was writing these new pieces......he showed me this chart..but that's the one thing i didn't listen to...i didn't want to know HOW he did it..the phone rings..and he doesn't skip a beat..it's the same brilliant intricate endless paced conversation...it takes me at least 10 minutes to figure out he's talkin' to Bobbie... We go to dinner downtown..in this genteel steakhouse...black uniformed waiters...outside the orbit of a grad student.....we both orders steak..he treats me... & we go back & talk....& .....&.....& I take the nite bus back...dawn at Port Authority..subway to downtown bkly...i lie on the couch for 2 days...my body's immune system broken down...when i get over it....i'm free of something.... twds the end... we seemed to do best by e-mail.... we did a little (10 copies) book NY 2000..... collage xerox staple... Re: Fwd Fwd Fwd... Dear... let's just learn to fly. just using our arms! Love, Bob... Dear.... been practicin'...at treetops...goin' higher Love, Harry... Happy Landing..... Dig It.... computer generated imagery... Love Love.... Harry Nudel.... —Harry Nudel Robert Creeley died today and I am beside myself. I was not a friend or mentee of Mr Creeley but he did do many kindnesses for me a poetic nobody without the 'right' pedigree he did not have to be generous but he was and it helped form me into a poet. I first met Bob in Dallas Texas at a reading, he signed my well worn copy of his New and Collected and said he would correspond with me. I send him a poem which he critiqued—I was being critiqued by Robert Creeley! this care for another human being the care for the little things made Robert Creeley a great poet and a great man. His words meant allot to me as a younger poet. He wrote on the bottom of the page "Make it New Yourself!" Later when I started Chicagopostmodernpoetry.com Robert Creeley consented to be interviewed it took some time but he did the profile and completed it only a month before he died. He answered questions with care and with respect and his answers were meaningful and important I think. In the end Creeley's death is a break and a continuation with our poetic fathers and mothers. Creeley was mentored by some of the greatest poets our American Idiom has produced Pound, Olson, Williams, Cummings he was friends with some of our great poets Levertov, Duncan, and others and our great Artists like DeKooning, and Klein and he was a mentor to so many of our new dear poets like Lisa Jarnot, and Peter Gizzi, and so many others for whose work we are blessed and I mean blessed not fortunate. Robert Creeley's poetry was part of God's singing. —Raymond L Bianchi For Robert Creeley For many of us, there is one particular book or poet who turned our heads around, who excited us enough to realize that we could pursue our artistic instinct—for me, the poet is Robert Creeley, and the book is A Day Book. This was in 1979 in Madison, Wisconsin, where I was studying as an undergraduate. After reading nearly all of Creeley's work, I quickly got serious. I wrote and rewrote the same handful of poems that, like Creeley, emphasized the subtely and discontinuity of thought and language.       Shortly after moving to New York City two year later, I heard Creeley read at a small gallery. After the reading, I stood in line patiently behind a few autograph seekers and then I approached him... my poetry rock star. I handed him an envelope with one poem in it, and said: I'm embarrassed to do this, but you're the most important poet to me and... Creeley gracefully received the envelope and asked if I had included my address with it. I nodded that I had. A week later I received a beautiful letter from him, commenting on the poem. At the end of the letter he asked: "man, who taught you to write like this." I wrote back (immediately): "you, of course." He wrote back: "I had no idea." This was the kind of humble contribution that defined the many years that we were in touch, the kind of quiet contribution and support that so many others have also articulated. Creeley's great influence on me as a poet is overshadowed only by his even greater example of how to be a poet in the world. Below is the poem that I presented to him in 1981. the lease under snow things flatten and stay so. how so. how some don't or... words like mud under- neath or in exhaling smoke, opening all windows in our apartment and still... you want to make a fire, lay the sleeping bag beneath? what that I say this is not love? —Robert Fitterman We were drinking. It was Oregon. Eugene in the mid 70s. He wasn't one of those ugly drunks filled with hatred and disappointments. Still the stories were endless and circular. He was Creeley. I didn't know what that meant then, what it meant to be Creeley. In some sad way appropriate to the time, we threw references to Bunting and Pound and Ginsberg around the table. I knew it was important to be Creeley. I felt responsible. I began to feel that I was with someone who had a dead aim on what mattered most. Later when I wanted to start a magazine, I wrote to him for help. When I was looking for work in academia, he offered to be helpful. When I wanted a sense of some one whose ears were trued to the language that I heard and spoke and dreamed and sang in, he was there with words and understanding. Bob met my son at some early point in our friendship. Maybe somewhere in Maine, possibly for a fleeting five minutes in Harvard Square, or one evening in Henniker with Joel Oppenheimer. Always it startled me in a beautiful way, the mindful query and familial interest that he expressed in the health and happiness of a child who could only have made the briefest impression on the poet. That profoundly human generosity of concern is Creeley for me. —Don Wellman Creeley Satori what comes of it, comes along, weighs down, what are its thoughts of him, its—the occasion of a ruse, trick of life, it ticks the clock heart stops it ticks still lungs labored— breath stops & still it ticks "end of the line" "a good run" ticks the occasion inside the life or death of it what is a man? of his going out what is it still ticks? leaving poesie & its denizens the measure? it's time & it's time again to muster the battalions of those that stay not part but celebrate sweete companye Allen sang let "it go slow/ earth/ heaven/ hell" world gone to hell cruelty throughout the lands heaven a line of poetry as if it were perpetual struggle a lifespan stakes high rigorous and now without you can we too be consummately human not lived through this time lived with, lived upon, lived among so many bards in the bardo what did you teach me? your great satori? what was it? a breath away "forever young" April 5/05 Boulder death anniversary of Allen Ginsberg —Anne Waldman I translated Robert Creeley's poems "Like They Say" and "The Wife" into Chinese in the seventies. Both poems were included in my bilingual book of poetry "Let the Feast Begin — My favorite English Poems" published in Taiwan sereral years ago. His poetry has been one of my great American influences. Spring     In Memory of Robert Creeley Spring is a bed sweet yet short awaking from hibernation you are about to yawn yet suddenly you find your outstretched limbs confined —William Marr I first met Robert Creeley at a dinner party following a reading he gave at Bard during my senior year. I was, when introduced, quite intimidated by the man—thinking perhaps of Bradford Morrow's describing him as a "wild cat" and of the nearly overflow-level crowd gathered at the reading—and said no more than three sentences to him, two of these most likely being "hello, nice to meet you" and "goodbye, nice to have met you." A friend of mine tried to make me feel better about the situation by reminding me that we were both headed to Brown and that once there I would have the opportunity to offer more in the way of conversation. At the start of the semester the Creative Writing department held a small gathering and introduction of new students (and new faculty) which I considered not attending because of an unshakable cold I had acquired some days before. I mention this only to convey how uncomfortable about the situation I was going in and how relieved I was upon departure. Somewhere during all my wandering around and sneezing on people I had the chance to sit down with Robert and talk, though I do not remember most of what we talked about because half of it we mumbled. His wife, Penelope, once commented on this, his mumbling, asking if in class it was ever hard to understand what he was saying and I told her that it was not, seeing as I also mumbled and could identify with him and this always meant a lot to me. Which is, of course, not to say that it ever seemed he did not know what he was talking about. It is just that I believe he was better in one-on-one situations, in for instance, our tutorial meetings each week, where he would talk briefly about my poems and then tell me stories for the remainder of the hour. Someone once asked me—someone who wanted me to introduce them—what Robert was like and when I told them he was the most humble important person I had ever met, they scoffed and told me, in a general sense, that this was not surprising. I think this is probably wrong. Of everything, I most regret not having the opportunity to introduce more friends to this new friend I'd made. They would certainly have been surprised. —Jibade-Khalil Huffman I met Robert Creeley thru e-mails, then later in person, invited him to participate in a letter press broadside journal, he was the quintessential professional. The simple act of acquiring a poem, publishing it took on amazing qualities. He will surely be missed, never ignored & will always inspire. the meek shall inherit the roar 3-30-5 Forgot to read my horoscope, till after I hung out all day on the ladder, was told then to beware of nonsense. If it said conscience I would have fingered you, as dead. Clear your breath accentuate accent like if my grandfather was brilliant or if my father was his father, then we'd be related. No now you are gone, dishes after thanksgiving all the men leave the table; you & I help the women clear, wash dishes, glasses. I'm happy, songs in apron you are gone in the closet with all of my aunts. You that carpenter who dressed timber built an ark foothills of North Carolina, David & Moses hung around kibitzed   then new came for a rest. Darkness sets it,   we all run for cover   you saunter to chair   clear pipes set hill to psalm. —John Tyson from A Book of Closings Yours sincerely, All my best to you, Cordially, All my best to you, Do write soon. I look forward very much to your letters. Yours, Send as many poems as you can, very damn good, Regards, All best & will write again soon. Aff'ly, All our best to you all, All our best. All our love to you all, All our very best to you all, Ok. Fuck that. All our love to you all, write soon. All our love to you, All our love to you, All our love/ All our love to you both, Love, All our love, Love to you all from Betty and me. All my love, All our love, Con amore and much respecto, All our dearest love to you all, All the best to you Bob. Send me a photo. Write soon, all our love to you all, Love, Yrs in Christ/ All my love to you all. Love All my dearest love, All my love. Yr old friend when others etc. With love: Love to all of you. All our love. All my love to you all, All our love to you all, All our love to you, and write soon. All our love to you and Ann Love Write soon, all our love. Love from all of us, Love, All our love, All our love. Write. Love. Love to all. All our love to you. Write soon, All our love to you all & write. All our love to you all, All I wanted to tell you was how much I enjoyed hearing from you, how good and lively the two BMR's are and how much we here all love you and yours. Write soon my angel. Love to all, Love from us to you and yours, All our love to you all & write soon, Write when you have time. All our love to you. Do write when you can. All our love. Love from us all. All our love, always. Love, All our love. Ah yes, as always, all our love. Write soon. Best luck to you with it & all our love.] All our love to you & family, Use your own good judgment. All our warmest love to you. All our warmest love to you & all good Mallorcans. All our love to you and the family. Write me a long letter. Miss hearing from you. All our love, Thanks for the news on BMR. I'll write a descent letter soon, it's a goddam thick time & I'm making it barely — but to hell, again with that. Write. All our love. All our best love. All our *love to you all, *Viz that don't get cut, no matter. My love and concern you'll always have. Ok. All my best to you all, All our warmest love to you. Yrs/ All our love. I. yr friend: All love as ever, Love to you both, My best, "A Book of Closings" is a chronological arrangement of "closings" extracted from Irving Layton & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence, 1953-1978, edited by Ekbert Faas and Sabrina Reed. On 25 January 2003, I was reading various odes, for whatever reason, when I became interested in the question of how poets say goodbye to one another in more congenial, or to put it differently, under the auspices of ordinary comings and goings. I know Bob was a marvelous friend, mentor and correspondent for so many of us, but "how to get said, what must be said" here? After reading this bit at the Small Publisher's Fair in London this autumn past, it was Erica Van Horn's very useful encouragement that inspired me to print "Closings" as a handset, unbound book at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanian in Kreutzberg. Below, appears one of the last (cherished) letters I received from him in late January. Dear Kyle, That wee book is a great pleasure. Moreover, it really gets the basic pattern of Irving's and my rapport, i.e., how we both felt toward one another and how we 'came on,' so to speak. He's had a hard time the past years, Alzheimer's and pretty alone in public facility. Leonard Cohen keeps tabs, I think — but the heyday, sadly, of Irving's public authority seems now all too long ago. He could sing like a veritable bird — e.g., "The Madonna of the Magnificent." Anyhow you did us proud. Best as ever, Bob —Kyle Schlesinger When I came home after hearing of this man's death I found, still in the in-box, an old email from Robert Creeley. It was only personal, only information and consolation—nothing about the "business" of literature, only about life which had to be lived. I cannot say this with any grace, but I need to say, he was a person willing to help anyone, and he did, often. I never knew anyone more generous. —Bin Ramke CREELEY'S BIRTHDAY DRIVE Bob Creeley's birthday parties were legendary, but nobody in their right mind would get in a car with Bob for his traditional birthday drive. Not even anybody in Bolinas, California, in the mid-seventies when being in your "right mind" was a matter of perspective. Which is why everyone laughed when Bob, his one good eye shining demonically, cast about for someone to drive with him from Bolinas to Stinson Beach and back, in honor of his 50-something birthday. Bob made his request about half way through the night, at a time when at least half the celebrants were safely beyond his reach, having curled up to snore on the beach or passed out on the floors that Bobbie was going to have a hell of a time restoring the next day or week. Bobbie Louise Hawkins, then Mrs. Creeley, was like a sturdy redwood in a storm at these events. Steadfast, heroic, hospitable, right there, but no man's fool. And not all like a redwood, physically. More willowy, actually. Time, in those days, was also quite fluid. When Bob called for a driving companion, I was somewhat awake and I thought that it would be a great opportunity and honor for me, a young poet, to accompany the master on this unique journey. I felt chosen and utterly thrilled to get private time with the man who wrote, "I Know a Man," a poem in which the line, "Drive, he sd," famously occurs. All right then. I climbed into the passenger seat of something I don't quite remember, except that it was old and huge and made a lot of noise, and with Bob at the wheel we hurled ourselves into the California night on the twisty black ribbon flung above the Pacific Ocean with the stars swirling all over it. Soon after launch, I knew with sudden certainty that Bob's one good eye was closed and that he was not using the brake after flooring the gas pedal. We flew at unimaginable speeds over loopy ridges and through the stars and I also knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that this was the death ride that, I later found out, was Bob's annual defiance of nature and fate. I also found out that the few people who had accepted this ride in the past and survived, had become secretly phobic about cars and many of them quit driving. I found these things out much later, but for the moment all I saw was the flashing brilliance of foam riding the crest of waves hundreds of feet below us and the piercing coldness of stars throwing themselves at us as we threw ourselves at them. I tried to think: "cosmic embrace," but it wasn't a comforting hug, no matter what my strenuously acquired California beliefs dictated. Except for this regression to elemental fears, nothing came of my intimacy with the great man. Bob didn't utter a word until our space vehicle thudded to a merciful stop in Stinson Beach. I tumbled out weak-kneed, still holding, it appears, a flask half-full of whiskey. I handed it to him: "Well, happy birthday, Bob!" He took a huge swig, then said, "Ready to go back?" "Well, actually," I mumbled apologetically, "I think that I'll stay in Stinson tonight... visit a friend." Creeley grinned. He knew and didn't think to blame me. I'd been willing to risk my life with him for at least half the trip and that was more than any of his enlightened friends had been willing to do. I had promise. I may have even been the poet I thought I was. At least, that's what I think he thought. On subsequent occasions, we were better friends, and it became unnecessary to go to all that trouble to prove anything. There will be many memoirs written about the poet, who passed away at the age of 78 on March 30th 2005, and I will add some of my own in time. But for now, look at my knuckles: they are white just from remembering. —Andrei Codrescu After the sad news of Bob's death at sunrise, I read his Kore to my young students last Wednesday and felt, as always, and knew they felt, the continuity and resonance of his poems— out of the deep past and as far as English poems will be read into the future. I remember him saying once, "People shouldn't forget how to live, that is, to live." Kore As I was walking     I came upon chance walking     the same road upon. As I sat down     by chance to move later     if and as I might, light the wood was,     light and green, and what I saw     before I had not seen. It was a lady     accompanied by goat men     leading her. Her hair held earth.     Her eyes were dark. A double flute     made her move. "Oh love,     where are you leading     me now?" —Susan Stewart In tableaux; outplane meeting suffix and antonym take back the give and catchphrase monitor sound for its sake, it's not that we go back on old roads to step on past noontides and glyphs, mono- logues of pace. —John Kinsella Acrostic Apologia IV. / from & for Robert Creeley And the Mexican Neighbors with Down from the gate Remember Explicit, of the mind, And the senses provoke it— Lifted, or come, Are all there is Unable to say Ridiculous. A weakness, Then must I forever Reach out for a common Of love's accident, this Of being before the thought of it Love has no other friends In confusion of trust and dependence. No doubt one day it will —Patrick Durgin Robert Creeley has been around all my life and these poems would not have been written were it not for him. And so I send them to you 'with deep appreciation' for 'this man, this inspiration.' FEAST AND LAMENT How your breasts, love, fall in a rhythm also familiar, neither tired nor so young they push forward.....I want you.    —Robert Creeley, Untitled Poem, in Pieces, Charles Scribner and Sons, NY, 1969. How can one write of touching, electric current-like, but shouldn't put my hands on your cushions, rising soft and full, long sleek legs that lead everywhere into realms of darkness where your hair adorns a sanctuary, falling tight and loose, even on your chest, where my eyes have feasted these many long years. And now I yet learn to love amidst a still vigorous lust dancing in attendance upon my age, my growing years, while tongues lick my door and lap my sashes, while flames leap lush and rank winds yammer. 24 November 1996 A NEW BOLDNESS In 1953, the year that initiated the Kingdom of God on earth from a Baha'i perspective, the Black Mountain School of poetry was at its peak. The New York School based in Harvard University was just starting to gel. The Beat Generation of poets, centred at Columbia University, was developing a fresh fertility. San Francisco was on the edge of a poetry Renaissance that began in 1955. New American poetry had begun, at last, to show up in print. Ten volumes of New American poetry, five of them by just two poets, Robert Creeley and Charles Olson, came out that year. The first had come out the year I was born—1944—and 19 books of this new poetry by 1953. These New American poets had very little contact with each other and there is in their poetry an overwhelming sense of despair and isolation. Many of them met for the first time at the end of the Ten Year Crusade in 1963 and 1965. with thanks to Ron Silliman, "The Desert Modernism," Electronic Poetry Review, 2002. 1953 was the biggest of years: 200 territories opened to the Faith— by Armistice Day—in pursuance of the spiritual conquest of the planet. Little did they know, those poets, with their own new life that a prelude had begun, a prelude to a mass conversion that would revolutionize the fortunes of this new Faith. There was a new boldness in the air, a collective force that stood outside the stiffling fifties. It was not rock-'n-roll, nor was it that new poetry, but a most wonderful & thrilling motion....permeating the world.1 1 'Abdu'l-Baha in God Passes By, p.351. November 17th 2004 —Ron Price remembering, this, of Creeley— The sense of responsibility. I keep talking about it when anybody asks me. This story: when my first book came out, 1961, I sent it to Creeley. I had never met him, had heard him read, of course, his quiet voice was the loudest thing around. A few days later I got back a postcard from him, thanking me for the book and saying something decent about it, and then excusing himself for not saying more, because his little daughter had just died, that day, in an avalanche or cave-in. Dealing with that, he had the heart to spare, to help a young poet along, out of pure goodness, I guess, the sure Responsibility. From which I tried to learn, have never learned enough, that way so 'natural' with him, to take care, of the other. I still thank him. The day after he died I was writing something else and found it saying this: nobody speaks any names at all nobody says the name of the dying one let one sit quietly beside one letting one go. Let there be a house into which one comes to go let there be one quiet one to say what has never been said. I think I was thinking not of how much he wrote, but how much his writing said. —Robert Kelly No Wow, Bob Odessa? Even now it's too late for beginnings. Dang me. Your orbit's safe with me. In many ways I'm healthier than ever. Let 'em rally fiercely to have known you. And say Bob if I had if I had had I known, I'd say, Hasta, Guero, no less remembering the thing lost is not precisely you Bob. Even thinking about you I think about us remembering which you intended. By you me. Like one of those East Texas weeds in ubiquity exalted and unusual. Bob? —Glenn Mott Over thirty years, I had the pleasure of spending four or five evenings with Robert Creeley when he'd come to Chicago, our former home, to read. The first time I met him I was extremely young, probably 20, and just beginning as a poet. What was standard despite one's age was Creeley's respect for the act of communicating about poetry with whomever he found himself—poets, professors, young people—he brought the best of himself into every situation and was a wonderful teacher in his low-key, thoughtful, exhilarating mode. I was so honored that he spoke to me in this way, and though I can't remember a single word he said, I remember the effect—and have had the ability since to invoke his presence in a very personal way when I read his poems. Many years later, on his 65th birthday, he was reading for New American Writing in Chicago. When Paul Hoover and I went to dinner with him, he ordered a hamburger, fries, and chocolate cake at an upscale restaurant. We joked about birthday food being somehow unchanged as we go through life. And I think that my sorrow and even disbelief at his death has to do with that desire for immutability—that there would always be Robert Creeley and his hugely intelligent and moving engagement with life and poetry in our world. He's still in our world—his poems are completely of it—but we all will miss him terribly. —Maxine Chernoff What Gets Said for Bob a scarf holds my breath through walks against the wind's grain snow catches in filter woven there is no place to avoid New England when that's where your there is something returned to yet Buffalo seems to not let us have you home the snow the cold won't let up to obstacle the way we meet and cherish the treat of such company in which to dwell is more than one can ask for more than one deserves as if we deserve anything another can provide what one loves well remains the rest is shadow in the corner of a photograph we laughed about the angle of the approach the longing in an eye focused on going such are such loves on the move and one knows what comfort is what the world has come to be or offer the loyalty of, say, animals, or friends, say, as in how are you, my friend? runs up from the heart to the gullet no stopping the mouth but to kiss a cheek goodbye it is the need to say what you mean —John Landry The first time I met Bob, not on the page, but face to face, was when I was a student at the Summer Writing Program at Naropa in 1984. I signed up for the program principally in order to meet him. Bob was entirely generous and welcoming to me, but what I remember best about the week of his visit was one evening when he was on a panel. He was clearly a little drunk, and he began talking extemporaneously about writing, about words, what it all meant. I can't remember exactly his phrasing, but at one point he said something like, "Words are the only things we have to speak with," and then broke down in tears. It might sound flat or even trite now, but a lot of us were wiping our eyes on our shirtsleeves. There was something in his vulnerability and conviction that involved us all in the struggle with language and its meaning: Turning one wants it all— no defenses.     About five years later, when I was living in Oklahoma, Bob came to give a weekend workshop. Most of the participants were rural schoolteachers. Bob greeted me by exclaiming, "When I saw your name on the roster, I wondered if that could be my old friend!" I reeled all weekend in the pleasure of being called Bob's "old friend." Meanwhile, my classmates introduced themselves by mostly admitting that they'd really wanted to be in the workshop taught by a local mystery writer, but had been bumped into the poetry class. Bob looked at me and winked. He sat by patiently when the workshop administrator instructed us that "Every poem must include who, what, where, when, and the weather." Later, that evening, following a very competent but more conventional fiction writer's reading, Creeley said he was moved by her work and so wanted to share from his own work in a manner that would correspond to her emotional engagement. His was a characteristically charitable assessment of another writer's work. However, the reading that followed, which included his "rage" poem, was so passionate that it left me stunned. Getting up to read afterward, Philip Lopate chided the audience, "Do you know how fortunate you are to have heard the best poet this country has produced?"     Lopate's admonishment recurs for me now. This loss feels very personal to me and it comforts me to realize how many people will feel similarly. I can so easily conjure the sound of Bob's voice and the way his poems sat inside it, but I cannot reconcile myself to the fact of his passing. What comes to mind, if recontextualized, is Kenneth Patchen's query: "What shall we do without us?" —Elizabeth Robinson http://www.deanesmay.com/files/deanesmay-Hesawmorewithonethanmostwiththree.jpg —Harvey Bialy This (For RC) This The work Of so many Hands: Mine Yours Ours And the birds And the wildflowers And the dead trees From last year's fire This This This This This This bubble This question This liquid skin This lump In my throat This so many pointing Fingers This waveparticleword This little grass shack This little black dot This little white dove This her voice This strangeness Of woman And man This explosion This weave This line upon line