Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P. Capen Professor of Poetry and the Humanities at State University of New York at Buffalo, and lived in Waldoboro, Maine, Buffalo, New York and Providence, Rhode Island, where he taught at Brown University. He was a recipient of the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and was much beloved as a generous presence in many poets' lives.
“MemoriesHello, duck,in yellowcloth stuffed frominside out,littlepillow.”
Robert Creeley
“I know this body is impatient.I know I constitute only a meager voice and mind.Yet I loved, I love.I want no sentimentality.I want no more than home.”
Robert Creeley
“The awful thing, as a kid reading, was that you came to the end of the story, and that was it. I mean, it would be heartbreaking that there was no more of it.”
Robert Creeley
“Moon, moon,when you leave me aloneall the darkness isan utter blackness,a pit of fear,a stench,hands unreasonablenever to touch.But I love you.Do you love me.What to saywhen you see me.”
Robert Creeley
“Love, if you love me,lie next to me.Be for me, like rain,the getting outof the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-lust of intentional indifference.Be wetwith a decent happiness. ”
Robert Creeley
“Thought is a process of work,joy is an issue of work”
Robert Creeley
“When I speak, I speaks.”
Robert Creeley
“Still, no one finally knows what a poet is supposed either to be or to do. Especially in this country, one takes on the job—because all that one does in America is considered a "job"—with no clear sense as to what is required or where one will ultimately be led. In that respect, it is as particular an instance of a "calling" as one might point to. For years I've kept in mind, "Many are called but few are chosen." Even so "called," there were no assurances that one would be answered.”
Robert Creeley