Robert Creely (1926-2005)

[Below from Donald Factor, via a MeFi thread]

In the early sixties I edited a magazine called Nomad. We did a manifesto issue and this was Creeley's contribution:

A NOTE

Robert Creeley

I believe in a poetry determined by the language of which it is made. (Williams: 'Therefore each speech having its own character the poetry it engenders will be peculiar to that speech also in its own intrinsic form.') I look to words, and nothing else, for my own redemption either as man or poet. Pound, early in the century, teaches the tradition of. man-standing-by-his-word,' the problem of sincerity, which is never as simple as it may be made to seem. The poet, of all men, has least cause and least excuse to pervert his language, since what he markets is so little in demand. He must find his living elsewhere. His aim must never be deflected by anterior commitment, even to those whom he loves. Words cannot serve responsibly as an apology for those who may wish to make them one.

I mean then words - as opposed to content. I care what the poem says, only as a poem - I am no longer interested in the exterior attitude to which the poem may well point, as sign-board. That concern I have found it best to settle elsewhere. I will not be misled by the. niceness, of any sentiment, or its converse, malevolence. I do not think a poet is necessarily a nice man. I think the poem's morality is contained as a term of its structure, and is there to be determined and nowhere else. (Pound: 'Prosody is the total articulation of the sound in a poem.') Only craft determines the morality of a poem.

Louis Zukofsky offers. A Test Of Poetry' as. the range of pleasure it affords as sight, sound, and intellection.' I am pleased by that poem which makes use of myself and my intelligence, as a partner to its declaration. It does not matter what I am told - it matters, very much, how I am there used. Our world has been so delivered to the perversion of language ( the word qua trick or persuader) that my own soul, such as I know it, comes to life in whatever clarities are offered to it. Poems allow me to go on living, and I am grateful for my life.

The Missing Piece

Missing Rudolph Lope

Has it really been over a year since Mr. Lope posted this assessment on his now-defunct blog? if only I had more readers like him. If only someone were even reading my blog. Ah, but it's the illusion of audience that keeps us hitting "print" or "publish", isn't it?


The Poetry of Gunther Quinte 


I believe it is time now to consider the work of Gunther Quinte, a poet who, though popular on the continent, has failed to garner the attention he deserves here in the United States. I first became aware of Mr. Quinte's poetry somewhat recently when C.P. Galom urged me to consult the man's website. I was shocked, not only by the explosive originality of the verse, but by the seeming anonymity of the poet. At a recent Doe Library reading here in Berkeley, I asked several of my colleagues what they thought of Gunther Quinte's latest book (Tub Math) and was met with nothing but puzzled stares. It is my hope that, with this essay, this horrifying lacuna in the American poetic sensibility may, at last, be filled.

Though a proper introduction to Mr. Quinte's work would begin with a discussion of his first book, the brilliant, post-avant masterpiece, Poems in the Way of Experience, I shall begin instead with his most recent, and to my mind, most accomplished work, Tub Math. Tub Math's poems seethe with the experimental energy of Quinte's Crony Award-winning second book Burn Outs; but temper their experimentation with a considered, phenomenological investigation of poetic being. Consider, for example, the first lines of "Plumage Rock," perhaps the book's most arresting piece:

The organic inspector came by, itching

to certify our day. I exhaled smoke.

Ignoring for the moment the clearly Messianic figure of the "organic inspector" and the terrifying exhalation of smoke (could this be the smokey belch of Cacus, burrowed in his lair?), I am moved, even now, to swoon by the simple lyricism of these lines...

Here Comes Stephanie Strickland

7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old?

Poems are words that take you through three kinds of doors: closed doors, secret doors, and doors you don’t know are there.

From the latest Here Comes Everybody.
With great links to Stephanie Strickland's online work.

Flakes

"Turns out the pink stuff was a shrimp."

Tears before the verdict,
All this talk about relaxing.

Clusters of bird watchers,
Svengali tailor.

It took only the afternoon to readjust.

He who steals the honey,
He who dreams of footprints.

A live auction? Disgusting.

It's a trick that'll kill a guy

INTERVIEWER

What are you trying to show?

CELINE

Emotion. Savy, the biologist, said something appropriate: In the beginning there was emotion, and the verb wasn’t there at all. When you tickle an amoeba she withdraws, she has emotion, she doesn’t speak but she does have emotion. A baby cries, a horse gallops. Only us, they’ve given us the verb. That gives you the politician, the writer, the prophet. The verb’s horrible. You can’t smell it. But to get to the point where you can translate this emotion, that’s a difficulty no one imagines. . . . It’s ugly. . . . It’s superhuman. . . . It’s a trick that’ll kill a guy.

From the Paris Review's Writers at Work #3