Reviews for The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975

The average rating for The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975 based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-05-14 00:00:00 Muhammad Khairi Creeley is wonderful. Saying one has "read" this book is like the Chinese brother in the kid's book thinking he can swallow the WHOLE ocean. He does, for a while - but can't hold it in! So imagine trying to REVIEW it. There is so much going on here, that NOBODY can capture it all, let alone "finish" it. It's so much like John Cage's music. Or Marcel Duchamp's Art. If we haven't Interiorized Silence, at one point or another in our lives, we are at sea with all three of these Icons. Silence lets us live. Silence Breathes. Silence IS when Everything ISN'T. Music is Full of Silence, and that's where its Meaning resides. So THAT's the Meaning of the Music of Robert Creeley here, too. OK. So for this "review"... I'd like to just sit with you in Silence and WONDER at his early poetry. You know, early, like in YOUR early years - that time in your life when your kids were little - the two of you were quietly settled down in a little place of your own, for the first time in your lives... That's the time when "a rose is a rose is a rose". When what you see is what you get. Nice and simple. Everything IS coming up roses, for the most part. Though, granted, there are vague hints of unease. But, it was a time when you didn't see the Big Picture. That didn't matter. You didn't care about that, because you were Happy Where You Were. And you spoke personally, in the first person. It was a warm and cozy feeling. Sure seems nice to many of us now! Ah, sweet innocence. And for the young Creeley there are very few thorns in his life. There is none of the later abstracted truculence - which owes more to Zen than to life's aporias. For Simplicity - in your life or in your poetry - Dissolves Complex Problems Subconsciously. So here we go - here's the YOUNG Creeley, with his million-dollar ear... A FRAGMENT: On the street I am met with constant hostility and would have finally nothing else around me, except my children who are trained to love and whom I intend to leave as relics of my intentions. THE DRUMS: How are you Harry the last time we met it was in Heaven or so I remember FOR THE NEW YEAR: From something in the trees looking down at me or else an inexact sign of a remote and artificial tenderness - a woman who passes me and who will not consider me - things I have tried to take with which to make something like a toy for my children and a story to be quietly forgotten. Oh God, send me an omen that I may remember more often. Keep me, see to me, let me look. Being unhappy, there is the fate of doing nothing right. RETURN: Quiet as is proper for such places, The street, subdued, half-snow, half-rain, Endless, but ending in the darkened doors. Inside, as they who will be there always, Quiet as is proper for such people - Enough for now to be here, and To know my door is one of these. *** Four stars.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-10-25 00:00:00 Brenda Cadieux Grief, grief I suppose and sufficient Grief makes us free To be faithless and faithful together As we have to be. - D.H. Lawrence, Hymn to Priapus The first volume of The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley includes the following books: The Charm, For Love, Words, Pieces, In London, His Idea, Thirty Things, Backwards, and Away. In addition, the first volume includes Creeley's uncollected poems from this period... I wanted you without virtue - so to speak, a history of alternatives. Lusts of mind ache for realization no less than any appetite wants enough. - Again * * * The world you know as one piece after another, bending its place in your mind looking after the golden sun. - Sunset * * * Warmth is the way of all flesh The length is skin and bones - cold feet! It's all night long. - Looking Out