Creeley, Robert White

▪ 2006

      American poet (b. May 21, 1926, Arlington, Mass.—d. March 30, 2005, Odessa, Texas), wrote colloquial, plain-spoken, minimal verse, which was often compared to that of William Carlos Williams. In the mid-1950s Creeley taught at North Carolina's experimental Black Mountain College, where for three years he edited the highly regarded Black Mountain Review. The college awarded him a bachelor's degree in 1955. With poet colleagues Charles Olson and Robert Duncan, he promoted a poetics free of formalism and elitism. His collection For Love (1962), penned between 1950 and 1960, brought him national attention, as did the appearance of his works in Donald Allen's groundbreaking “beat” anthology The New American Poetry 1945–1960 (1962), which showcased his intensely personal verse. Though his early poetry focused on his marriages and divorces, beginning with Later (1979) Creeley recalled his youth and concentrated on issues related to aging and mortality. Other works included The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley 1945–75 (1982), Memory Gardens (1986), The Old Days (1991), and So There: Poems 1976–83 (1998). Besides serving as visiting professor at universities in British Columbia and New Mexico, among others, Creeley was a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo for 37 years (1966–2003). He also wrote plays, essays, and short stories. In 1988 he became a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and he was awarded the Bollingen Prize for poetry in 1999.

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