A critical retrospective of Creeley's work from 1952 to 1982

Look Inside

Table of Contents

Introduction - 1

Chronology - 21

Part One: The 1950s: Beginnings

Excerpts from Letters to Robert Creeley
William Carlos Williams - 29

A Letter to Robert Creeley
Louis Zukofsky - 32

A Letter to Robert Creeley
Charles Olson - 34

From "A Commemorative Evening for Louis Zukofsky"
Celia Zukofsky, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley - 38

Gripping, Pushing, Moving
Sherman Paul - 40

From "Robert Creeley at Black Mountain"
Michael Rumaker - 49

From "Black Mountaineering"
Gilbert Sorrentino - 67

A Requisite Commintment
Cid Corman - 70

From "Five Poets"
Robert Beum - 73

"What I Come To Do Is Partial"
Louis Zukofsky - 75

The Work of Robert Creeley
Crunk [Robert Bly] - 78

From "More Than Pretty Music"
Hugh Kenner - 91

From "Bearded Barbarians or Real Bards?"
Kenneth Rexroth - 92

Part Two: The 1960s: Into a Present, a Presence

After For Love
Robert Duncan - 95

"For Love" Of
Cid Corman - 103

Creeley's For Love
John William Corringtion - 123

From "Robert Creeley's For Love Revisited"
Robert Peters - 128

Version [a poem] 
Robert Creeley - 131

Introduction to Robert Creeley
Charles Olson - 133

Review of The Gold Diggers
Linda W. Wagner - 136

To Take Place and to "Take Heart"
Frederic Will - 151

From "An Alphabet of Poets"
John Thompson - 153

Words 
Arthur Ford - 157

A World of Sensible Particulars
Irvin Ehrenpreis - 175

Address and Posture in the Early Poetry of Robert Creeley
Kenneth Cox - 180

Robert Creeley: "I Begin Where I Can, and End When I See the Whole Thing Returning."
Richard Howard - 187

Robert Creeley and the Pleasures of System
Robert von Hallberg - 199

Robert Creeley and the Tradition
George F. Butterick - 217

Review of Pieces
Reed Whittemore - 236

From "Recent Poetry: The End of an Era"
Louis L. Martz - 239

Review of Pieces
Peter Cooley - 253

Part Three: The 1970s: A Life Tracking Itself

Later Poems

Problems of Robert Creeley
M. L. Rosenthal - 265

"In London"
Cynthia Dubin Edelberg - 275

A Reading of Thirty Things 
Robert Duncan - 301

Creeley's Late Poems: Contexts
Linda W. Wagner - 310

From "Possibilities of Conclusion"
Christopher Lambert - 321

Pieces of a Mirror: Robert Creeley's Later Poetry
Fred Moramarco - 335

Creeley and the Visual Arts - 345

From "Robert Creeley on Art and Poetry: An Interview with Kevin Power"
Kevin Power and Robert Creeley - 347

From "The Act of Seeing with one's own eyes': Stan Brakhage and Robert Creeley"
Wendy Brabner - 370

A Sense of Increment: The Cellected Poems - 389

Creeley: His Metric
Robert Hass - 391

Small Persistent Difficulties
Thom Gunn - 401

Robert Creeley's Continuum
Hugh Kenner - 410

Bibliography - 415

Description

Since the publication in 1952 or Le Fou, Robert Creeley has been the subject of continuing critical review. He has been called a traditionalist by some. Yet he was influenced by the poetry of William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg, by the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock, and by the jazz of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk.

This collection gathers the best of that criticism in a retrospective of Creeley's work from 1952 to 1982, and includes reflections by William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukofsky, Cid Corman, Robert Bly, Kenneth Rexroth, and Robert Hass.