Poet Creeley Dies at 78

Robert White Creeley, a respected and innovative poet known for his brevity and unique use of phrasing, died last Wednesday at a hospital in Odessa, Texas. He was 78.

Creeley had been on leave from Brown University to attend a two-month literary residency in Marfa, Texas when he became seriously ill. He died of complications from pulmonary fibrosis.

Creeley was admitted to Harvard University in 1943 but left to become an ambulance driver in India for the American Field Service during World War II. Though he dropped out shortly before his 1947 graduation, he taught poetry at Harvard during the summer of 1972. He had also been invited to speak at this year’s Harvard Phi Beta Kappa ceremony.

“[Creeley’s relationship to Harvard] was more of a love-hate relationship,” recalled Louisa Solano, the owner of the historic Grolier Poetry Book Shop on Plympton Street—a place Creeley frequented as an undergraduate.

Solano said she knew Creeley well and was greatly distressed by the death of such a “warm” and “compassionate” man.

“I feel that the world of poetry has been shaken by his death,” Solano said. “The pantheon of modern poetry—[Allen] Ginsberg, Creeley, and [Phillip] Levine—is slowly passing away. I don’t think there is anyone to replace them and the energy and passion they had for life and articulation.”

Solano says she is proud of her store’s bookmark, which features a 2000 quote from Creeley.

“Poetry is our final human language and resource. The Grolier Poetry Book Shop is where it still lives—still talks, still makes the only sense that ever matters,” reads the bookmark.

Grolier’s held a special memorial for Creeley on Saturday evening. The less than 10 attendees offered personal reflections, favorite stories about Creeley, and of course—poetry readings.

Friends at the memorial noted that Creeley was known for his emotional and intellectual techniques and his surprising resistance to revisions—claiming to have written his poetry intuitively rather than through a process of rewriting and revising.

Ruth Lepson—a poet and teacher who says she views Creeley as her mentor—recalls how he was often asked how his ideas flow so easily onto the paper.

“‘When you are swimming in the ocean you can’t control it,’” Lepson recalled Creeley saying.

“Spare as his poems are on the page, their large-heartedness is everywhere apparent,” said Stephen R. Williams ’06, noting the great respect and care he has for Creeley.

“I think of him as a truly wise person, genuinely committed to finding, or creating the rare ‘common places of feeling,’ as [Creeley] wrote,” said Williams.

Memorial attendees also discussed that Creeley knew and was known by many of the days greatest poets.

They specifically mentioned that he worked closely with Black Mountain poet Charles Olson on the effect of natural breath impulse and phrasing.

In a 1972 interview with the Boston Phoenix, Creeley discussed his unique use of phrasing.

“I love irresolution because it has energy,” he had said in the interview. “The phrase for me breaks intuitively.”

Creeley’s keen sense of phrasing may have stemmed from his penchant for music, mentioned attendees at the memorial.

According to Lepson, Creeley is said to have studied the rifts and phrases of Jazz legends like Charlie Parker to develop a sense of style. He even had several of his poems put to music by his friend Steve Lacey, she said.

Though he sometimes sought solitude to write, Lepson remembered, he occasionally listened to music to get a new perspective and distance himself from his work.

He had a great genius for sound and the ways that sound and pause create meaning. Because of this, he was the best reader of his own work, she said.

Lepson also discussed the ups and downs of Creeley’s life.

“Happily and sadly are perhaps the two words he wrote most—always seeing two sides,” said Lepson. “I’ve never seen such a happy-sad person in all my life.”

He was a rebellious and energetic youth that enjoyed writing despite personal hardship, Solano said.

Writing and editing more than 60 works, Mr. Creeley received numerous honors for his efforts—including a Guggenheim fellowship, Yale University’s 1999 Bollingen Prize in Poetry, the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, two Fulbright fellowships, and a National Book Award nomination.

He was also a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

He was involved with Modernists like William Carlos Williams, the Beats, and then the Black Mountain poets like Olson.

Creeley taught for 25 years at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Always a New Englander, Creeley, lived in Providence R.I. with his wife Penelope. He is also survived by, his first two wives, Ann MacKinnon and Bobbie Louise Hawkins, and by his eight children.