April 6, 2005

In Memoriam Robert Creeley

by Nick Montfort · , 12:06 pm

Mind’s Heart
  by Robert Creeley

Mind’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.

2 Responses to “In Memoriam Robert Creeley”


  1. scott Says:

    Codescru’s account of the birthday drive is priceless.

  2. Bill Pearlman Says:

    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…

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