Here Creeley’s riffs reach the formal height and emotional depth of his old work.

Poetry

Robert Creeley has created a noble life body of poetry that extends the work of predecessors Pound, Williams, Zukofsky, and Olson and that provides like them a method for his successors in exploring our new American poetic consciousness. –Allen Ginsberg

If I Were Writing This

Poetry by Robert Creeley

If I were writing this was the last book of poems completed by Robert Creeley and published during his lifetime (New Directions, 2005). The words he wrote to describe this book are oddly prophetic: “Age brings experience, not wisdom; age makes time actual - each day another - until there is no more. These poems have been my company, my solace, my feelings, my heart. When they cannot speak it will all be silence.” Though Creeley died in 2005, his poems are not silent - they vibrantly continue to embrace life while acknowledging, with no self-pity, the inevitability of death. The message (as he always ended his letters) is “Onward!”

Paperback(published Aug, 01 2008)

ISBN
9780811217569
Price US
14.95
Price CN
17
Trim Size
5x8
Page Count
112

Clothbound(published Aug, 01 2008)

ISBN
9780811215565
Price US
21.95
Trim Size
5x8
Page Count
112
Portrait of Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley

20th century poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, editor and teacher

Here Creeley’s riffs reach the formal height and emotional depth of his old work.

Poetry