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Robert Creeley United States of America    PWF 1998

Robert Creeley was born in 1926 in Arlington, Massachusetts. In 1954 he began teaching at Black Mountain College and edited the Black Mountain Review. Three years later, Black Mountain closed, and Creeley moved to the West Coast, where he met Kerouac and Ginsberg and befriended Jackson Pollock.

Although most identified as a poet (For Love, Pieces, Windows, Echoes), he has written a significant body of prose including a novel The Island, and a collection of stories, The Gold Diggers. His critical writings are published in Collected Essays. Charles Olson and Creeley developed the concept of “projective verse”. For Creeley, “form is never more than an extension of content”. ‘

Why poetry? Its materials are so constant, simple, elusive, specific. It costs so little and so much. It preoccupies a life, yet can only find one in living. It is a music, a playful construct of feeling, a last word and communion.’

In all, Creeley was an incredibly prolific writer, publishing more than sixty works during his lifetime. He also served as a mentor to many younger poets, making great efforts to ensure that others felt comfortable around him. He was the New York Poet Laureate from 1989 until 1991 and was awarded the Bollingen Prize in 1999.

Robert Creeley died on March 30, 2005 in Odessa, Texas. He is buried in Cambridge, Massachusetts.