April 6, 2005
In Memoriam Robert Creeley
Mind’s Heart
by Robert CreeleyMind’s heart, it must
be that some
truth lies locked
in you.Or else, lies, all
lies, and no man
true enough to know
the difference.
Poet Robert Creeley died on March 30. Charles Bernstein has recently updated the Creeley page on PennSound and the EPC Creeley page at the University of Buffalo, where this prolific and influential poet taught before recently moving to Brown. The EPC page has links to many obituaries. The main page of Conjunctions is now filled with tributes to Creeley, including one from e-lit writer and Brown student Brian Kim Stefans, who, in his Roger Pellett persona, reworked some of Creeley’s poems.
April 6th, 2005 at 10:15 pm
Codescru’s account of the birthday drive is priceless.
April 16th, 2005 at 1:25 pm
DEAR BOB CREELEY
No mind coheres
a poet in the world
substances of Whitman,
Williams, Zukofsky,
Dickinson, Emerson
come into presences
tidings in the words
over and done, swift
measures in the open,
you were our knight
able to say it
not heavily
but surely your own…
Bob’s passing touched me greatly. I had had an e-mail from him a few days earlier…We were old friends from New Mexico days. Bob wrote a lovely blurb for my last book, Flareup of Twosomes. Creeley made poetry a living and communal affair, and was truly a great democrat, sharing his life and concerns, his amazing conversational powers, with men and women all over the world….His presence, though hardly always jovial, always made a difference; his best poetry has a grace and terseness that will clearly live…