Robert Creeley was a massively key voice and unique mind in American poetics. His voluminous letters to Charles Olson (published by Black Sparrow Press) is a major testament to his lasting influence and genius.
“Mr. Creeley liked to cite the influence on his writing of Abstract Expressionist painting and such jazz musicians as Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. Jazz taught him, he once wrote, that ”you can write directly from that which you feel.” —The Boston Globe
“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….” read the entire Andrei Codrescu white-knuckle ride and explore some great writing at: The Exquisite Corpse, A Journal of Letters & Life
Visit Bob’s homepage at ROBERT CREELEY: Online Works, Obituaries & Memorials, biography, links, audio, etc…
“At his death I felt such conflict and confusion. Often we were taken to be mentor and student, Maximus and Minimus — as Richard Elman spoke of us. But our “life in print” had been remarkably shared and at his death I felt a distance occur, not between us but between myself and that projected world of our enterprise. It could no longer be the intimacy of a day’s possibilities. No one was any longer so present.” –Robert Creeley on Charles Olson
In 1975, I was a grad student at Cranbrook Academy of Art and had the opportunity to study with Mr. Creeley. My friend Jim Storm use to make jokes about his bad eye.
neat photo of Barry Roth & Creeley in class: