Robert Creeley

Once known primarily for his association with the group called the “Black Mountain Poets,” at the time of his death in 2005, Robert Creeley was widely recognized as one of the most important and influential American poets of the 20th century. His poetry is noted for both its concision and emotional power. Albert Mobilio, writing in the Voice Literary Supplement, observed: “Creeley has shaped his own audience.”

CPC Readings

Friday, January 26, 1979
The Art Institute of Chicago

Friday, October 18, 1985
The School of the Art Institute

Poetry by Robert Creeley

Going to Bed

That dim shattering character of nerves
which creates faces in the dark
speaks of the heaven and hell
as a form of corporate existence.

Oh don’t say it isn’t so,
think to understand if
the last time you looked
you were still a man

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Variations

There is love only
as love is. These
senses recreate
their definition- a hand

holds within itself
all reason. The eyes
have seen such
beauty they close.

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The Rescue
The man sits in a timelessness
with the horse under him in time
to a movement of legs and hooves
upon a timeless sand.
Distance comes in from the foreground
present in the picture as time
he reads outward from
and comes from that beginning.
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