This is the first story in a two-part series on the late Robert Creeley, an eminent poet who taught at UB from 1964 to 2002. Creeley died last week at 78.
In the early Fifties, when he was living on the island of Mallorca, near Spain, Robert Creeley sent a letter across the Atlantic Ocean to the American poet Charles Olson, beginning a long, strong friendship.
The two poets were inspired by their passion for a new kind of poetry-a verse of subtle intensity that would reflect real patterns of speech and thought. Creeley and Olson began to write every day; soon Creeley "was spending a full eight hours a day" on the letters, according to scholar Cynthia Edelberg.
In the days since Creeley died last week, at the age of 78, the big newspapers around the world have run long obituaries that remembered his close friendships with great poets, like Olson, and the groundbreaking, fascinating poetry he began to write in those years. Most critics have said Creeley was one of the most important American poets of the twentieth century.
|
Web-Only Feature |
|
Listen to a selection of Robert Creeley readings and interviews from the past several years.
|
But that sort of prestige alone cannot explain the powerful emotions that Creeley's death has inspired in Buffalo, the place that became his home.
Prestige can account for reverence. But in Buffalo, Creeley is also remembered with a deep affection-an affection that comes from the strong friendships he made with his colleagues and students.
Creeley's students remember him as a poet who had a unique passion for company, and they remember feeling immediately included in his world of thought.
"He's one of the most generous people I've ever met," said Ben Friedlander, a student of Creeley's at UB in the 1990s who now teaches American poetry at the University of Maine. "He had a gift for tending to friendship that not many people have. I have been reading tributes online, and I was struck by how many people said they got e-mails from him in the past few days."
His colleagues at UB remember him not only for helping to build Buffalo into a world-renowned center for innovation in poetry, but as an emotional nexus of the English department.
"The strongest thing I have always pulled from Creeley is that poetry is an urgent calling, and that a company of poets are people who heed that call," remembers Susan Howe, a poet who has taught at UB since 1990. "He made us believe in the urgency of our task. That's what Robert did."
A poetry of thought
Creeley's poems are known for being short and packing an emotional punch. What marks his poetry, according to his students and colleagues, is its playful and unadorned use of language and its reflection of a process of thought.
Charles Bernstein, an internationally known poet who came to UB in 1990, said that this gave Creeley's poems a sense of unpredictability.
"To read a Creeley poem is to be engaged in an active process of thinking, often disturbed and distorted thinking, reflecting a person very engaged in everyday life, and often its dark sides," said Bernstein, who is now the Donald T. Regan Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. "He moved from one particular moment, one particular gesture, to the next. You never know what will come next in a Creeley poem, much in the way thinking really works."
Creeley won many awards and honors for his poetry. He was named New York State's poet laureate in 1989, and he won the Bollingen Prize, widely considered to be the top honor in the field, in 1999.
His work evolved through the years, from the poems he exchanged with Charles Olson across the ocean in the 1950s, to publication of the collection "For Love," in 1962, to the many acclaimed books of poetry he had published since. He went through a period of writing minimalist poems, often drawing the ire of conservative poetry critics.
But Diane Christian, a distinguished teaching professor in English at UB who had been a close friend of Creeley's since she came to UB in 1970, says that his poems have had an enduring appeal for students because Creeley "never settled." Christian said that like many students, Creeley was passionate about life, but questioning towards it as well.
"One of the things that was so attractive about him was that he was so restless," Christian said. "There was a youthful sort of restlessness about him; he was like that until he died. And students loved that, of course, because that's the way they are too."
Three of Creeley's most popular poems-"I Know a Man," "Oh No," and "America"-are published in this issue.
"I Know a Man" is widely regarded as Creeley's most famous poem. Many critics have remarked upon its lyrical cadences, its resonant line breaks, and its last three lines: "drive, he sd, for/ christ's sake, look/ out where yr going." To Bernstein, the last three lines suggest urgency.
"The potential violence that explodes at the end suggests the problem of living in the world and not knowing where you're going. It's a recognition that at any moment, you don't know where you are or what you're doing," Bernstein said. " 'For/ christ's sake, look/ out where yr going' has a shocking, even comic effect."
For Christian, the last line is emblematic of Creeley's fanciful yet careful use of everyday speech.
"That last line, 'look/ out where yr going' was such an ordinary phrase, but there was a playfulness-there was always that kind of wonderful playfulness in his language," Christian said. "It was always playing against human speech."
Creeley's language was not complex, but his poems were often ambiguous. Other early poems such as "Oh No" have darker, more disturbing themes.
Bruce Jackson, UB's Samuel T. Capen Professor of American Culture, said he reads "Oh No" as ghoulish. At first, he says, the poem appears to be a sweet poem about death, and friendship. But the title adds a twist, typical of Creeley.
"What about that title? If 'Oh No' is the title, then that's a scary poem. 'Smiles on their faces/ and they will likewise all have places?' It's the f***ing Stepford dead poets."
Creeley's interests were broad-in his classes and in his poems he engaged jazz, art, film history, philosophy. His poetry reflects an engagement with all of these art forms. Students and colleagues of Creeley's also remember that while he had a very distinct style, he loved the history of poetry, particularly Elizabethan and American poetry. He rejected the idea that America did not have a distinct poetic tradition.
Many critics and colleagues, including Susan Howe, saw his poem "America" as a response, in part, to the poetry of Walt Whitman, who wrote often about American themes and was considered one of the first American poets.
"'America is prophetic of our situation now, and also our character," Howe said. "To me, he's a very American poet, and when I think about what I mean by that, I think of that poem."
Austerity and warmth
Ben Friedlander, the former student of Creeley's, has often taught Creeley's poems to his classes at the University of Maine.
Friedlander took a class with Creeley on Charles Olson, and like many of Creeley' students, developed a strong friendship with the poet. Creeley and his wife, Penelope, were witnesses at his family's wedding.
Students are always struck by the honest, direct emotion of the poems, Friedlander said.
"They feel so direct, you think that's how you write a poem-you just think of what's in your head and then you say it. But when you try it, it's not really that easy," Friedlander said. "It's not what most poetry is today. A lot of poetry today is mostly attitude. There's nothing interesting to it. You buy into the attitude, and that's what sells it. It feels thin in comparison to 'I Know a Man.' "
Many of Creeley's poems were sometimes austere, or dark. But they were not strictly so. His readers said because they attempted to express personal thought and speech, unadorned, they also reflected genuine warmth.
The poems did not tell stories in the traditional sense. But Creeley himself was a storyteller, and his stories often revealed his approach to poetry, and his passion for living and for his friendships with the people in his life.
Nearly everyone who was friends with Creeley has a favorite story, whether it is one the poet would often tell, or one that came from the time they spent together.
Diane Christian's favorite story, from 35 years of friendship, suggests a warmth and desire for company, and another theme that fires Creeley's poetry and defines his legacy - the need to give as well as receive.
"Bob told a story of having a dream, and in the dream, a lot of people are eating, and they're really eating too much," said Christian. "Someone offers him something, and he says 'No, thank you, I've had enough.' He's quite proud of his measure.
"But he told that dream to a psychoanalyst, and the psychoanalyst said, 'You know, you're all the people in the dream.'
"To me, that's what poetry is. You're taking all the perspectives."
Part 2 of this series, which will run Monday, will talk about Creeley's poetry readings, his classes, and his role as a mentor and friend to many UB students.
