Robert Creeley–Online Poems Essay, Research Paper

Still Life Or

mobiles:

that

the wind can catch at,

against itself,

a

leaf or a contrivance of wires,

in the stairwell,

to be looked at from below.

We have arranged the form of a formula here,

have taken the heart out

&

the wind

is vague emotion.

To count on these aspirants

these contenders for the to-be-looked-at part

of these actions

these

most hopeful movements

needs

a strong & constant wind.

That

will not rise above the speed

which we have calculated,

that

the leaf

remain

that

the wires

be not too much shaken.

? 1987 Robert Creeley

Online Source: http://www.diacenter.org/diacenter/prg/poetry/87_88/creeley1.html

THE LANGUAGE

Locate I

love you some-

where in

teeth and

eyes, bite

it but

take care not

to hurt, you

want so

much so

little. Words

say everything.

I

love you

again,

then what

is emptiness

for. To

fill, fill.

I heard words

and words full

of holes

aching. Speech

is a mouth.

? 1987 Robert Creeley

Online Source: http://www.diacenter.org/diacenter/prg/poetry/87_88/creeley3.html

OLD STORY

Like kid on float

of ice block sinking

in pond the field had made

from winter’s melting snow

so wisdom accumulated

to disintegrate

in conduits of brain

in neural circuits faded

while gloomy muscles shrank

mind padded the paths

its thought had wrought

its habits had created

till like kid afloat

on ice block broken

on or inside the thing it stood

or was forsaken.

? 1994

Online Source: http://www.diacenter.org/diacenter/prg/poetry/94_95/creeley.html

Goodbye

Now I recognize

it was always me

like a camera

set to expose

itself to a picture

or a pipe

through which the water

might run

or a chicken

dead for dinner

or a plan

inside the head

of a dead man.

Nothing so wrong

when one considered

how it all began.

It was Zukofsky’s

"Born very young into a world

already very old…"

The century was well along

when I came in

and now that it’s ending,

I realize it won’t

be long.

But couldn’t it all have been

a little nicer,

as my mother’d say. Did it

have to kill everything in sight,

did right always have to be so wrong?

I know this body is impatient.

I know I constitute only a meager voice and mind.

Yet I loved, I love.

I want no sentimentality.

I want no more than home.

"Goodbye" first appeared in The Exquisite Corpse (1996)

Online Source: http://www.princeton.edu/~euphorb/Issues/Spring96/works/GOODBYE.html

ZERO

for Mark Peters

Not just nothing,

Not there’s no answer,

Not it’s nowhere or

Nothing to show for it -

It’s like There’s no past like

the present. It’s

all over with us.

There are no doors…

Oh my god! Like

I wish I had a dog.

Oh my god!

I had a dog but he’s gone.

His name was Zero,

something for nothing!

You like dog biscuits?

Fill in the blank.

Online Source: http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/ezines/deluxe/five/bob.html