Robert Creeley:
Words in the World

This podcast, taken from the ALOUD archive, is a discussion from 2000’s “Words In the World” series; a curated series of artists whose stories, essays, poems, novels, and films illuminated a global culture in crisis and celebration, extending their imaginations into the vast territory of the heart and the world.

Robert Creeley’s poems are distinctive for their precise, terse–almost minimalist–language, for the syncopated rhythms of silences with his verse, and for his lifelong investigation of the heart’s dark and often confused transactions. His idiosyncratic lyrics, his skillful, ironic, and tender voice, shaped the legacy of a “new American poetry” for an entire generation of younger poets. Creeley attended Harvard in the 1940’s, leaving to drive and ambulance in the India-Burma theatre of WWII. In the 1950’s he taught at Black Mountain College.

In memoriam, 1926-2005.