Product Description

Here, in a new selection of 200 poems from five decades, is the distinctive voice of Robert Creeley, reminding us of what has made him one of the most important and affectionately regarded poets of our time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #755761 in Books
• Published on: 1996-03-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 366 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Creeley, poet laureate of New York State, constantly gauges what it means to be human, in poems that cope with the rush of memories, the chaos of dreams, the sudden flare of feelings. His mercurial verses on love and life's vicissitudes respond instinctively to our innate but half-articulated need for roots, familial, social and spiritual. There is a deep strain of pessimism in a poet who proclaims "both men and women cold / hold at last to no one / die alone." From the pared-down, pure diction of "For Love" to the recent complex thought-experiments of "Memory Gardens" and "Windows," this gathering of 200 poems charts the trajectory of a poet who delights in words and remains true to self.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Creeley offers a "uniquely cubist perspective, at once abstracting and distancing" (Memory Gardens, LJ 4/1/96).
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
After
After Lorca
Age
Air: Cat Bird Singing
All The Way
Ambition
America
Anger
The Answer
As Real As Thinking
Ballad Of The Despairing Husband
Beside Her To Lie
The Bird
Blues
Boat
Body
Bresson's Movies
Broad Bay
By The Rude Bridge (july)
A Calendar: Whan That Aprille (april)
A Calendar: Helen's House (september)
A Calendar: Helen's House (september)
A Calendar: March Moon (march)
A Calendar: Memory (december)
A Calendar: Old Days (october)
A Calendar: Summer Nights (june)
A Calendar: The Door (january)
A Calendar: The Tally (november)
A Calendar: Vacation's End (august)
A Calendar: Wyatt's May (may)
Chain
Chanson
The Charm
Chasing The Bird
The Company
Consolatio
The Conspiracy
Desultory Days
The Dishonest Mailmen
Do You Think
The Door; For Robert Duncan
Dreams
Echo
Echo
Echoes
The Edge
Eight Plus
The End Of The Day
Entre Nous
Eros
The Europeans
Ever Since Hitler
Fathers
The Finger
Flaubert's Early Prose
Flesh
The Flower
Focus
For A Friend
For Love
For My Mother: Genevieve Jules Creeley
For No Clear Reason
For Rene Ricard
For Somebody's Marriage
For Ted Berrigan
For W.c.w.
For W.c.w.
A Form Of Women
Four Years Later
Funeral
A Gift Of Great Value
Goodbye
Guido, I' Vorrei Che Tu E Lapo Ed Io
The Happy Man
Hart Crane
Hearts (february)
Heaven Knows
Helsinki Window
Here
Hi There!
The Hill
Home
The House
I Know A Man
I Love You
If
If I Had My Way
If You
The Immoral Proposition
In London
In The Fall
The Innocence
Intervals
Jack's Blues
Jack's Blues
Juggler's Thought
Kitchen
Kore
The Language
Later
Le Fou
Life
Like They Say
The Lion And The Dog
Love
Love (2)
Love Comes Quietly
A Marriage
Massachusetts
Mazatlan: Sea
Memory Gardens
Midnight
Mind's Heart
The Moon
Mother's Photograph
Mother's Voice
The Movie Run Backward
My Own Stuff
Myself
The Name
Names
The Names
Numbers: Eight
Numbers: Five
Numbers: Four
Numbers: Nine
Numbers: One
Numbers: Seven
Numbers: Six
Numbers: The Fool
Numbers: Three
Numbers: Two
Numbers: Zero
An Obscene Poem
Oh Love
Oh Mabel
Oh Max
Oh My Love
Oh No
Old Song
One Day
The Passage
The Pedigree
People
The Picnic
A Picture
A Piece
Place
Plague
Please
A Poem
The Pool
Prayer To Hermes
Rachel Had Said
Rain
The Rain
Rain (2)
The Rescue
Return
The Revelation
The Rhythm
River Wandering Down
Sad Advice
The Seasons
Self-portrait
The Sentence
Shadow
A Sight
The Signboard
Sitting Here
The Skeleton
So There
Some Echoes
Some Place
Something
Something For Easter
Somewhere
Song
Song
Song
Sparks Street Echo
Stairway To Heaven
Still
Still Dancers
Still Life Or
Still Too Young
Stomping With Catullus
Supper
Talking
A Tally
The Temper
There
There Is
They
This World
Time
To Work Is To Contadict Contradictions, To Do Violence
The Traveller
Tree
The Tunnel
Up In The Air
Versions
Wait For Me
The Warning
What
The Whip
A Wicker Basket
The Window
Words
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Customer Reviews

Charles Olson: "finding out for himself"
"History was "'istorin," which Olson took from Herodotus and used not as a noun or concept, but, rather, as a verb, "to find out for yourself." ---Robert Creeley, from his preface.

Charles Olson is a poet of poignant searching. Throughout this volume, confidently compiled by Olson's longtime friend and correspondent, Robert Creeley, Olson seems to be finding out for himself what it is to be human. In the soliloquy poem, "Maximus, to himself" (taken from Olson's magnum opus, The Maximus Poems), Olson shows that this process involves the discussion of feelings of inadequacy. He describes the frustration of "[standing] estranged / from that which was most familiar," when "the sharpness (the achiote) / I note in others, / makes more sense / than my own distances." Here, Olson seems to want to attain a certain quickness of mind which he sees as an essential human characteristic. The qualities he admires in others are mixed, though, as when he says of Sappho (in "For Sappho, Back"): "with a bold / she looked on any man, / with a shy eye." Her power seems to come in her duality, her ability to appear both "bold" and "shy." This discussion of Sappho shows that Olson is concerned with the classical world, but he can also be an achingly banal poet as when, in "As the Dead Pray Upon Us," he remembers his dead mother, saying, "And if she sits in happiness the souls / who trouble her and me / will also rest. The automobile // has been hauled away." A truly great poet, Olson realized that the real history is that of the self, in all its foibles, contradictions, and blisses.

The gentle giant
Although there are some, the adjectives are still few and far in between in Olson's verse. Remembering that the poet was a towering colossus of a man, the absence of such qualifiers seems like a purposeful holding back, a toning down of voice and volume to keep us unafraid. The short length of the lines may serve the same purpose, as does the sprinkling of indented stanzas, or the unfinished parentheticals, and other forms of play to alleviate the weight of heavy subjects. A towering colossus not only in physique, but truly one of the greats. There is out there in cyberspace a video clip of the poet in which, responding to an unknown comment, he says something like: "We need neither Vulcan nor Apollo, we need them like a hole in the head... [Pause]... We need only heaven and earth."

Essential, a quick look at a true genius
Charles Olson (1910-1970) was one of the most important American poets of the 20th Century. In this volume, Olson friend Robert Creeley has chosen most of the poems that I would have chosen for such a volume. He has included such works as "An Ode on Nativity" and "The Twist" which help celebrate the city of his birth and youth, Worcester MA. Creeley fairly evenly divides the book between choosing from The Collected Poems and The Maximus Poems. The only poem that is not in this excellent volume that I would have included is "Ferrini 1," Olson's tribute to his brilliant friend, Vincent Ferrini. Buy this book!