Talking With Robert Creeley

8/12/2019 Talking With Robert Creeley

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/talking-with-robert-creeley 1/67

Talking with Robert CreeleyAuthor(s): William V. Spanos and Robert CreeleySource: boundary 2, Vol. 6/7, Vol. 6, no. 3 - Vol. 7, no. 1, Robert Creeley: A Gathering(Spring - Autumn, 1978), pp. 11-76Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/302585 .

Accessed: 22/05/2014 21:09

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Duke University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to boundary 2.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 76.79.81.114 on Thu, 22 May 2014 21:09:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=duke

http://www.jstor.org/stable/302585?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp





http://www.jstor.org/stable/302585?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=duke



:S?r; ?~i ?

r?

5

..

.

WilliamV.Spano








As theplayer'sbreathwarms hefipple he tone clears.It istime to considerhow Domenico Scarlatticondensedso muchmusic nto so fewbarswithnever crabbed turnorcongested adence,never boastor a see-here; nd stars nd lakesecho himand thecopse drumsout hismeasure,snowpeaksare liftedup inmoonlightnd twilightand thesun riseson an acknowledged and.

- Basil Bunting, riggflatts

thatwe areonlyas we findout we are

- CharlesOlson, The MaximusPoems

Perhapswe have to pronounce hesentence, Poetry sameasuring,"with a different tress."Poetry is a meas-

uring." In poetrythere takes place what all measuringis in the ground of its being. Hence it is necessaryto pay heed to the basic art of measuring. hat consistsin man's firstof all taking the measurewhich thenis applied in every measuring act. In poetry the

takingof measureoccurs.To writepoetry s measuring-taking, understood in the strict sense of the word,by which man first receives the measure for thebreadthof his being.Man exists s a mortal.He is calledmortalbecause he can die. To be able to die means: tobe capable of death as death. Only man dies - andindeedcontinually, o longas he stayson thisearth, o

long as he dwells. His dwelling,however,rests n the

poetic. H6lderin sees the natureof the"poetic" inthe

takingof the measurebywhich the

measure-takingf

humanbeing saccomplished.

- Martin Heidegger, "... Poetically Man Dwells..."

12








Pre-face

Althoughthis prefacewas writtenaftermy talk with RobertCreeley- from he end, as it were - it is important, think, o establishits occasion in the beginning.Beforeour meeting, had writtenhimthe

followingnote:

What I'd like to emergefromourtalk- in a waythat thasn't in most of the interviewsou'vedone (and inthewritingabout your work) - is a sense (1) of yourunderstandingf the American radition as opposed tothe way it has been definedby the New Criticism) ndyour relationship o it; (2) of your "relationship" toand/or departure from early Modernism (i.e., the

Imagists, liot, Auden,Joyce,etc.), and,more

broadly,(3) of the relationship etweenyour "open" poetry ndthat dis-closive antimetaphysicalthinkingof recentphenomenologists especially Heidegger)that seeks to"surpass" the coercivereifyingr spatializing and thusconcealing) will to power of the Westernhumanistictradition:that contemporary hinking,n otherwords,that seeksto become "postmodern."

I understand he word"postmodern"primarily(thoughnot exclusively) na literaryense.To me,early

Modernism or, at any rate,Modernism s definedbythe New Criticalestablishment n the 40's and 50's -was not,despite Hulme's assertion, eally revolution,radical departurefromthe Western iterary radition. twas, rather, "fulfillment," .e.,the end of literature,nthe same way that Heideggerrefers o the most recentforms f metaphysical hinkingn the "onto-theologicaltradition" s the "end" of "philosophy."And preciselybecause of itsobsessivelywillful ommitment o closure,

to endings whichdetermine nd thus annulbeginnings).In otherwords,preciselybecause of itscommitment othe ontologicalpriority f form verprocess Beingoverbe-ing rmethodoverdiscovering: eriplus).

13








In thus "spatializing" or reifyingprocess,Modernism,ikeWesternmetaphysical hinkingwhetherCartesian or Hegelian or technological) becomes avirulent xpressionof the will to poweroverexistencegrounded ultimately in a dread of mystery,theunnamability f being. This is why, to me Williams',Olson's, and your open (projective,or, as I prefer,dis-closive)poetry (in which "form is nevermorethanan extensionof content," i.e., in whichtemporality s

ontologically prior to Being) with its "ground" innegative apability s post-Modern nd postmoderni.e.,post-Western).

That's my (and boundary2's) context- and, I

think,despite a different hetoric, ours. Anyway, 'mpretty ure t's close enoughto generate realand usefuldialogue.

The conversation tself ook place on July12, on the lastday ofthe summersession, in the study of Creeley'sapartment t 400 Fargo,above the neighborhood grocerystore,where he lives with his youngdaughter,Kate, and hiswife,Penelope,during hat partof theyearwhenheteaches at SUNY at Buffalo.On arrivinghere,we satdowncross-legged

on the floor in the middleof the room,facing ach other,barely wareofthe insistent oud roars of engines acceleratingacross the intersectionoutside. After Kate broughtus each a glass of cold lemonade, Creeleydonned the wool skull cap that he wears in the Kitaj portrait, nd webegan. Throughout he conversationKate drifted n and out oftheroom,listening, t times intensely, t timespassively, participantna veryrealsense.

CREELEY: I was struckby you know coming bythat Henry'sFrankfurterlace where thasthesignout announcing he best

Texas hots"in the worldor anyotherplace" (Laughter) which sa lovely metaphysical tatement.

SPANOS: Okay well the word"metaphysical" of course immediately generates ll kindsof reverberationshesedays intalk about poetry ..

CREELEY: Itwould seemto yes ...

SPANOS: ... notonlybecause the NewCritics ndtheearly Modernists weretremendouslynterestedn"Metaphysical"poetry but also

because Heidegger estroys thatis de constructs the meta

14








physical radition which sthe tradition f Western hilosophy.Andthekey to what's now interestingn theterm isetymological..

CREELEY: Right...

SPANOS: ... perceivingmeta taphysika that sto say from fteror beyond thingsastheyare..

CREELEY: Right...

SPANOS: ... so thatyou cansee existence llatonce inclusivelygetthewholepicture within he frame f theeye so to speak ...

CREELEY: Right some ultimate view of the earthe.g. from uterspace from omeotherplace thatgives hewhole pattern.

SPANOS: Exactly ..

CREELEY: Well I was struck propos it'spossibly digression but the Ihab Hassan a critic, think,who works atthe Universityf Wisconsin nMilwaukee was present t a discussionof scienceand literature theartsmore

accuratelya few

yearsago at Temple University. nd hewas forexample interested napersistentensethathefound n a widespectrum f recordfromsay popular iteraturend/or uchactivity as pop songs or art

songs to people likeChardin thewhole sense of leaving hebodyas some insistent roposal which inone sense to mymind reads as another erm ofthispositionof metaphysics that"place" where all can be seenand/orresolved. And also inreadinghim later ina discussion n TriQuarterly I was given he

magazine byhimgenerously nd read it and came upon hisdiscussion

ofJamesJoyce nd Beckett and theterms Modern" and "Postmodern"and hispoint forexample of thinkingf closure of thewill

to closure thewhole pattern f intention inthe Moderns theability o see beyondtheworld as given o some not idealizationhopefully nd really butveryhopeful enseof resolution andyou know bring t to a coherence. Pound'sgreat ry "I cannot

make it cohere" ...

SPANOS: Yes ...

CREELEY: ... or Yeats keepscomingback: "Thingsfallapart;thecentre annothold." The senseof failure inso far s the world cannot be madeto cohere.Hart Crane isformean extraordinaryModern

15








artist inso far s he proposes and deliberately ttempts Iwantto say a metaphysical esolution fa givenworld. And bythe time we getto Beckett what Hassanspeaksof as thehigh eriousness oftheModerns hasdissipated not literallyntocynicism

or notevenintolaughter despite say lonesco or aspectsofBeckett but a and norhas the worldview hrunk. It'sthattheworldhas become immenselyarger or immenselymorediverse nd immenselymorepresent. And the ability o thinkit orto bring t into some rational conditionhas beenall butyielded.

Inconversationswithpeople at SUNY-Cortland inthe late sixties these wereyoungwriters ome together as a conference Olsonmade a distinction etweenwhathe called a poetry fart and apoetry f whathe called affect a f fe c t and he spoke of himself

as being an instance f thepoetry f art and inways myself too.Buthe spokeof suchpoetsas Wieners JohnWieners as beingpoetsof affect n so far s the life s thedaily life daily lived and its magination itwasn'tas if twas simply tuckwiththat but it did not

metaphysically roposea conclusion.Itwasn'tworking owardsan endinmind.The mindwas usedto make the mindwas used to

notmerely o record but to work on whatis. "The mind, hatdailyworker n what is ..."

SPANOS: Olson can Iinterrupt

or secondOlson

inTheSpecial View ofHistory hastwo reallygreat quotationsas epi

graphs one fromHeraclitus and one from Keats. The one fromHeraclitus eads "Man isestranged rom hatwithwhich .."

CREELEY: ". .. he is most familiar."

SPANOS: VeryHeideggerian bytheway ...

CREELEY: Right right...

SPANOS: ... and the second is Keats'sgreatdefinition of NegativeCapability:

several hings ovetailed nmymind,& at once itstruckme,whatqualitywentto form ManofAchievement s-pecially n Literature whichShakespearepossessed, oenormously I meanNegativeCapability, hatiswhen

maniscapable ofbeing nuncertainties,Mysteries, oubts,without ny irritable eaching fter act and reason ....

CREELEY: Right ..

16








SPANOS: ... the implication eingthatwe areestranged from hatwithwhichwe aremostfamiliar because we attempt oname it tocoerce it into a metaphysical ramework. What want to sayisthatwhatyou are suggestingsthat there's a kindof sadness about

theearlyModerns who aredeveloping recognition arebeginningo recognize thattheycan't make it cohere as PoundsaysinCanto CXVI and thatmaybe true about theearlyModernswhereas he New Critics seem to assumethatthis s this s theway ofencounteringxistence by wayof art.This s whatartis

and alwayshas been. It's a willful oercion it'sa willto poweroverexistence. Olson obviously s reacting gainst his impulse toencloseexistence He's He wantsto let it be ...

CREELEY: Well I was reading hismorning forexample a lovely translation f BasilBunting's oftheopeningof Lucretius'Concerning he Natureof Things and it has this ovely

phrase oh waita minutenow this sactuallyfrom hefourthsectionofBriggflatts I'mthinking wherehe says thatthesun

thatthe elements f the earth and thenhegets to the sunthat "the sun riseson an acknowledged land." That to me is the

place so to speak inworking thatI would bothrecognizeand revere. t's anacknowledged and.And I lovethat wayofputtingit simply hat t'snota landthus coerced it's not an earthor

a world let'ssay that's thus brought o some demanding enseoforder. t's an earthfound nrecognizingts existence. Itmayseemamorepassive ttention nd itmayeven seem moreuselesslypatient.But it'sas ifthe great maginations inthatrespect oftheworld that was gift particularlyftheearlyModerns thegreatImago Mundimakers .e. imagemakers thoseextraordinaryimages hat Pound and Joyce and Mann or Proust all

thusgive orequallythose others s Freud all insist n thesense ofa world thatwould positit as this ase. What'sfascinatingo me

isto see thatworld so yield so that say thepersonswho wouldbe ineffectmyelder brothersnd sisters or possiblyyoungeruncles andaunts that s people as DelmoreSchwartzor Randall JarrellorJohnBerryman or Roethke orthat whole cluster fwriters I

was reading hem aproposthisteaching 'mdoing this summer andI see themreallybroken on that painfulwheel oftryingo sus

tain a continuing cohering imagination of the world. Andnotonlywon't it cohere but it literally breaks ntheprocess.I was

reading through ome of Jarrell's oetry hismorning intheclass I'm

teaching.It shifts rom

wryproposalto an almost

thedilemma s that theunderstandinghat theworld cannotbe thus perceived n itstotality thenbegins o invite notonlyto invite but to enforce a disposition owards heverybodyof

17








thepersons hat becomes terrifyingndhostile as say with Roethke.Orthewhole insistent theme ofexistentialismnthe40's. I

think ne aspectofthe greatmodernproposal of resolution ofWestern hinking eally ame a cropper whenabstractions eallygot

"too farout."

SPANOS: Whatyou seemto be implying and I think his s a very n

teresting oint is that theearlyModern poets and eventheirmore recentheirs were sort oftragic intheirrecognition

that the centerwill not hold thatthings o notcohere ..

CREELEY: Right...

SPANOS: ... whereas the New Critics beginwiththeassumption

that the taskofthepoet ispositively o imposean order on experiencefrom n "end" (metaphysically). think forexample oftheir

commitment to the imperatives fthe "fallacyof imitative orm."Andinthis sense of course theNewCritics havedrasticallymisreadthegreat arlyModerns and lost or concealed their ragicrec

ognition f the terrible nd disruptive ynamics fprocess over

against a kind ofteleologicalor metaphysical rder.

CREELEY: Well for nstance I keep hearing intheback ofmy

head a phrase Yeats usesin

that discussionon Modern

poetrywherehe's talking in his thencontemporaryense of writing.He's

using s his instances Pound and Eliot and also AudenMacNeice and Spender and hispoint ssimply hatthe

hierarchynd order hatthepasthad seemingly iven as a mythosand almost an accumulatingenseof factually ribalglory the

greatheroesof the continuum fthepeople to see these not

only yielded but rejectedbytheyoungwas staggering and hesaid now the love of Tristan nd Iseult s no more and hope

fullyno less thanPaddingtonRailroad Station.And hisphrase s "Let us

accept theworthless present." Which s to me "Let us accept the actual" as opposed to the I wantto saythe realthe realbeingforme alwaysthe imagination. I was talking ne

timewithJasperJohns apropos of Williams' it was a casual conversationina cargoing omewhere I was talking bout Williams' Only

the imaginations real" etc. etc. and was much sortof excited

bythat was thinkingf it as an attribute nworking and JasperJohns aid "Oh I didn'treallyfind he imagination seful it's a greatdistraction." Laughing)You could never magine Modernist a person

of theModern emper saying hat whereas he Postmoderns youcan absolutelyunderstand why that'ssaid thatimagination con-

stantly posits notpossibilities but distractingmages as

against he initial apprehension.

18








SPANOS: Right. Whichgetsus of course to thepositive tothevalorizing f the immediacy fexperience.Thisagain connects

withwhat I would call thepostmodern mpulse notonly inAmericanpoetry inWilliams' "no ideasbut inthings" but you

know Husserl oo and WilliamJamesforthatmatter saysagainst heWesternmetaphysical radition "We mustreturn o thethings

themselves" zu den Sachen selbst). And of course thisbecomesthefundamental pointofdeparture orHeidegger's phenomenological ontology: the return o thethings hemselves. Which opensup also into what strikesmeas beingyourmost pervasive and

infact beautiful and potentially ignificant ord intherhetoric fyour poetics: "occasion."

CREELEY: Occasion. I keepthinkinghat as the Latin occasuswhich I alwayswould mistranslate orvery ften. I couldn't rememberwhether-it as "sun rise" or "sun set." But it'sthatoccasus I can't to thisday rememberwhether t'sthe"rising fthe

sun" or "the setting." think t's anyhow it'sone of them(Laughing) ...

SPANOS: O.K. letme...

CREELEY: I waswonderingwhich t is Weshould look itup?

SPANOS: Let me suggest his: thatetymologically "Occasion"derives ultimately from the Latin word cadere which

means"to fall" ...

CREELEY: So it's the"setting fthe sun." O.K. (Laughing) I alwaysthought t was ...

SPANOS: Do you know the medievalversion ftragicdramacalled

De Casibus De Casibus Virorumllustrium "Of the Fall ofGreatMen"? The way I see it andwhatstrikesmeas being o richinthistermwhichyou've been usingfor fifteen earsnow is that

a poetry which derives out of itsoccasion Olson refers o itas "the act of the instant" is a poetry which nvolves thefall intotime intotemporality..

CREELEY: I hear...

SPANOS: ... into finiteness. It is a poetrywhich is oriented

I putthiswordundererasure noteastward butwestward notupward notupward butdownward...

CREELEY: Right...

19








SPANOS: ... in beingintheworld. Like the course of thesun it'sanoccidenting so to speak a westering..

CREELEY: I hear. I hear. Again forexample

itbrings

ntofocus so to speak thatsense I'd have withDuncan or otherpoetsofmy dear company that sense of beinggiven to writepoemsas opposed to casting bout forvariouspossiblethemesorsub

jects the senseof therebeing or Olson's sense of life s beingunrelieved Or suddenly I was thinkingfMallarme's "A Throw

of the Dice." I was thinkingf the word "case" as forexample:"This is the case" thatwhole sense thatthere an be no appealfrom nything therthan thatwhich s. Therecan be possibletransformationsithin ts terms or within erms thus reorganized

buttherecan be no alternatives o thatwhich s. I remember eadingP. W. Bridgman ears go - a kind of lovely dry clear physicist a longtimeago at Harvard. And I lovedhissense of time

namely hewas discussing various conceptual sensesof timeeitherwith relation o the sciences as inphysics but also to various

cultural onceptual patterns and hesaid of course thepresent s thatwhichresolves ll other possibilities Laughing) that s thepres

ent isthatwhich resolves thepast and/or the future. The

present swhere itcomesto be. And thatto me ofcourse would

be the crucial moment. 'd haveat times enses ike SamuelBeckett's: that nstant s so fragily apparent and sooftendiffusen itsmanifestations consciously let'ssay thatone very ftenhasthefeeling uchas "if I had onlyknown" or youknow things f that order ..

SPANOS: Yes all right. Listen again backto the notionofoccasion as "grounded"in the fall:the fall s the fall from theOneintothe ..

CREELEY: intothemany...

SPANOS: It's a dispersal a dispersal fthe ogos. Hereagain ofcourse theprinciple fdispersion n Williams' Paterson inOlson'sMaximus and inyourown poetry that sense of thedis

integrationftheOne of themetaphysicalOne intothemanyeternityntotime stasis ntoprocess Being ntobe ing identity

intodifference or to appropriate romJacquesDerrida diffirance

wherethelogos is infinitelyeferred and so wherethingsmakea difference and thus the importance fthefragile delicate and disturbing butalso tremendously potential i.e.

projective present.

20








CREELEY: For instance I was talking he otherday in thisclassI'm teaching: think that the focus I've been most nsistent

to haveused byvariouspeople inthequick summer pattern isto take as two terms notsimpleones at all actually butsimply

proposed the inside condition inbeing n theworld whatseems nterior personal o one's life and the outside whichcouldbe put looselyas all else or all others nd/or ll else. Andto me asOlsonwould say thecutting dge isalwaysat that place where

the inside movesto the outside or confrontshe outsideor viceversathatedgewherethemessage f that outsideis experienced is

transmitted. Inanycase I was suddenly hinking O.K.you could propose say Platoand what derives romhismodesofthinking as the processof abstraction and the unity f

possible states thepossibility f forms s being unifying andbringing ogethernto a singular onditionofexperience theefficacy

of forms o proposed and so conceived. AndthenI said well he'sa poet not a poet he's a thinkertherefore primarilyf thisinside tate of existence. To me it's instantlynterestinghat of course

he does use a cave. Thoughhe speaks magnificentlyfthe possibility fgoingout of it (Laughing) it'svery nterestingo methat hebeginswith a cave as the imagination fthehumanplace and experiencethereof.

SPANOS: Yes, that'sreally ignificant.t's thefallenworld where deaeidos image breaksup intowords.

CREELEY: So then on theotherhand one might say there'sAristotlenot too longafterwho's proposing: "What sthe natureof theout

side?" So that hisprocess thenbecomesan insistentategorizingand naming Laughter) presumablymuch nvolvedwith the"It"you know consistently large amountofexperience what is t?

butnonetheless we're nowthinking it's as thoughAristotle s

onlycontinuingheprocessthat Plato initiates incontinuing theauthority fforms apartfromwhat else might e even weakly

felt to be the case that s whetheryou know twas a bear whobityou or a hyena nonetheless you've beenbitten andsomething id it (Laughing) and you didn't know t,did you?LikeOlson's sense again both we do whatwe know beforewe knowwhatwe do. Andalso that ovelyDylansong "You didn't

knowit Mr.Jones." You didn't know which twas.

SPANOS: Kierkegaarabytheway whois

Heidegger's ourcehereputsit like this: "We liveforward and understand ackwards."It'sthegroundless roundof hiswholecritiqueof Hegel's Platonicepistemology of Re Collection ofthedispersedOne) and I think

21








of Heidegger's ermeneutics i.e. his distinction etween "for

warding"Repetition and backwardorientedviciouscircularity.t alsolooksforwardI think to thepostmodern alling ntoquestionof a poetry

as recollectingntranquillity (Wordsworth'summary efini

tion) in favor fa projectivepoetry. nfact doesn't whatyou'resaying relate o again one ofthose ideasthat recurs ver and

over inOlson it has forhisreaders become sortof standardever since itappeared inOlson's "ProjectiveVerse" but I'm un

certainwhether r notmostpeople who readyoursorOlson's poetryreallyunderstandt "Form isnevermore than an extensionof

content."...

CREELEY: Yeah...

SPANOS: Here too it's the ...

CREELEY: See thedilemma here as I gather vertheyears is prettyprecisely inthe word "content."

SPANOS: Yes.

CREELEY: Because formanypeople theword"content" impliesand/or tates sort of mentalfurniture.

SPANOS: Beautiful that's precisely thehangup that I've encountered nmyownteaching f that sentence.

CREELEY: I reallyfelt however vaguely t thatpoint that twasn't content it waswhat was intheactualsystem hat could mani

fest "itself" bywhatever orm was possible. I mean thethingthat I eventhen most nsistentlysed as example wasthe circumstance thathappens let'ssay whathappenswhenyou

take a glassof water and justdump iton the floor? The factofwater thecontent inherentlyfwater discovers a form aform specific o its "nature" to put it loosely on thesurface itmeets with. No idea ofwaterwillchangethat situation so to speak.

And thatwas the senseof "content" I like murderwill outI suppose iswhat I was mostly hinking f the natureofmurder

as an act will discover tself not because anyonethinks r wants t tobe thatway butbecause perse it s thatway.

SPANOS: Again Heidegger itseems to me is very illuminating ere.At least his is a vocabulary hat can illuminate ranyway amplify this notion ofcontent.That is that he talksabout thehermeneutic ircle. You know we knowfrom heend

22








whatwe're lookingfor n thebeginning butonlyina vagueway.Weknow t and don't knowit ..

CREELEY: I know I know...

SPANOS: It requires notkeeping ne's aesthetic distancefrombut leaping nto the hermeneuticircle totally nd primordially

ifwe'regoing o reallyfindout whatwe knowpreontologically so to speak but don't know.So that inHeidegger's erms

inthemetaphysical radition philosophical nd literary Form(Being) is ontologicallyprior to process (or temporality) your

term content whereas according o Heidegger's henomenologyand the postmodern oetic impulse process inyourterm content

is ontologicallyprior o Form. Intheone Form likeBeing istransformednto a substantial ntity. Intheother it remainsbecoming.

CREELEY: I would feelso. We werea few summers go incompanywitha youngtopologist who was workingnCambridgeMass.

We wereall inGloucester s ithappened I was asking his friend boutvarious situations fthinking withrelation o hiswork. For

one thing I asked hima kind of lovelynaivequestion apropos hissenseofhiscolleagues. I said "Do you find hecompanythus inwork

ing isattractiveo you?" I was really hinkingf it as a situationof say teaching orwriting forthatmatter.Did he find

pleasantcompany inhiswork? Did he like his coworkers?He said "Bob there sno one else inthosesituations." He

said "I'm thinking" and hemeant tnot inthe leastpretentiously"I'm thinking ofthe possible cases ofsomething for

whichtherehas been no priorpostulates you know no prior peculation I'm thinking of thepossibilities of thissituation's

beingthecase." And he said "The onlything can refer o mycol

leagues as you put it would be themath that'sgivingme theformulation. In otherwords there sno thing ut there that can constitute greement thatis I'm thefirstmanto think hat." It

isn'tthathe's being grandiose nthisproposal. He's literally doingwhatOlson proposes "testing nd missingome proof." And it's

the he has thisthing nhismind so he's testingt likea kidwho makes has the imagination f how a thingmight e contrived o floaton the water thus makes t and tries tout. Does itwork ordoesn't it? It isn'teventhathegets necessarilyn information

backalthough possibly ither a kid or a topologistwould. Butagain I don't think twould be simply ophistically but to

me thecontent is stillgeneratinghe form so to speakbecause there sn'tanything nown until t's thus discovered as

23








possible.Andto me the impulse to try o think heworld at allwould be manifest of a seemingunion ofcontent that getsout

or as theywould say incontemporaryargon getsoff nthisparticularmanner. There are obvioususesof this. He was saying for

example that the structure f waves proves o be insomeways a homologue of thesituation f the rapidextinction fdinosaurs. Thesetwo "events" intime/space an be shownto

havea structure significantlykin. What hatthengivesone as information is only and interestinglyo me a graphing of

theexperienceof knowing nothingmore nothingess. Itdoesn'tgetyou anywhere does it? It isn'tas thoughone isgoing nywherenthe

nature fthought butone's frankly again discoveringwhereone iswhat thespecificpossibilities f the instrumenteemto be. It's that

inherentontentof theart it seemsto me that's farmoresignificantthan whatthe artgetsto.

SPANOS: So that the stance given his orientation ifyouwill ...

CREELEY: It's almost Bill it'salmost as ifone istryingo almostproposeand hopefully nderstandf t's stillpossible to be human nyourmind.

SPANOS: O.K. The way I would put it is like this the stancegiven his orientation is beingintheworld.ou can't that'swhatbeinghuman s beingintheworld.ou can't standoutside it.

You've gotto be interested.Kierkegaard playson theetymologyofthis word "interest" so devaluedbytheWesternmetaphysicalradition inter sse inthe middleof inbetween. You've gotto

I'm going to invoke hecentral erm nHeidegger's eingand Timeyou'vegotto be care ful ..

CREELEY: Yeah ...

SPANOS: ... and of course in "Letter 5" of The MaximusPoemsthe letter ddressed o Ferrini Olson focuseson two radically e

lated words thatcropup both in hisand yourpoetry nd prose overand overagain pervasively alongwithwords ike "occasion":

"You see" hetells Ferrini whom he can't "meet" becauselike hispoetrymagazine 4 Winds he's placeless and thuscareless "You see I can't getawayfrom heold measureof care ..."

CREELEY: Olson says that men might care about hisrespectforWinthrop forexample as against John F. Kennedy ..

SPANOS: Yeah.

24








CREELEY: ... whenKennedy addressing he Massachusettsegislatureprior o hisbecomingpresident invokes GovernorWinthrop's re

vious addressto thatbody whenhe says at one point hewants"thatcityto shineupon its hills." And Olson's point then is

thatmenas Winthrop id then care about thekind of worldtheylived n. And thedilemma t present sthat as the humancol

lective we no longer are about the collectivefactoftheworld nwhich we live. So that forOlson I think possibly very you

know distinctly inhiscase and I think equally inmineour anger I guess I'll speakformyself ouranger gainsta poet suchas Robert Frostwould be I don't think ither ne of usbelievedhe cared thathewas quite agreeableto the appro

priation of thesituation of New England as conditionofpeople

and circumstance historicallynd otherwise butthathefactually didn'tgivea damn. As Olson forexample in like sensedoes truly attack Pound. He said: "Those who speakofthe dream

ina peasant's bentshoulders as though t weretruetheycared adamn for hisconversation" which sto say theydon't care about

thisman. Theyused himas a symbol of some cultural factbutthe actual instance fthe person theyhaveno interestnwhat

soever.

SPANOS: And this sconnected too ina fundamental ense

with he New Critical commitment o aestheticdistance. You'vegotto transcend the occasion. You've gotto riseabove it so you cansee thewholepicture t once metata physika.Whenyou writeyour

poem itmustnot emerge rom tsoccasion. It mustnot in01son's terms be the "act ofan instant." You can't care. Youcan'tcare. You can't writepoetry in care interestedly. ou'vegotto stand outside theoccasion objectively so thatyou can form

it so you canshape it which sto say coerce it from nend.

CREELEY: Well that to meagainwould be a hopefulkindofneoplatonicact...

SPANOS: Precisely..

CREELEY: . . . that wants to leave life by thinking about it.Forexample visitingnsoutheastAsia a yearago lastspringinSouth Korea as itwas actually I found a wholetradition f

say teaching which has beenthere a longtime inwhich ateacher tandsresponsible o hisor herstudents forever fterinrelation o their nformations against say ourWestern raditionwherewe makecontinuing riendships ith tudentspossibly but we

certainly on't feelnecessarily esponsible or he informationheywere or

25








were notgiven. Whereas n the Koreanpattern the teacherstandsforeverfter s a pledge forthat nformation e is responsible for nhis student's raining. And that student s absolutelyfree

to recallhimto it and/or o demand thathe continue the instruc

tion ifsomething eemsmissing inthe situation. There'sno sense of"Look kid you'vegraduated. I'm busynow withthese other

guys." I suppose there re stillaspectsof this nthe European tradition ofhanding n the information o a particularly ifted studentrather han ustbroadcastingt and hoping omeonewillpickitup.Butagain it's the natureof care that one finds inthe

Koreansense of responsibilityuchas I think Duncandefines whenhe says thatforhim responsibilitysthe ability o respond. Hedoesn't meanthatcynically or glibly.He means iterally that that's

what to him responsibilityonstitutes a factualresponsewhether o something ead seen or felt or heard but veryprimarilyto otherpersons. Again that longand extraordinary

friendship ithOlson I was veryvery aware in his writingbutequally in hisconversations or all else that hereally disliked

an abstraction hatwantedto be apartfrom hat which it observed.think hat'swhy thosepersons nmygeneration friends s AllenGins

berg weredelighted byHeisenberg we would chantalmost as amantra "Observation mpedesfunction " I was told manytimes

byfriendswhowerephysicists that thatwasn't what Heisenberg ad

in mind. Laughter) But we didn't care. We loved thesense of"Aha You see ifyou attempt thatdiscretedistance from he

thing happening you will literally notonlynotgetsuchan actual viewof it or actualizingview of it you verypossiblywon't getinto t at all " Then too incollege I recalltaking verybrieflycourses ncultural nthropology and cominguponsuch anddelicious

terms as "participant bservation" Laughing) and then beingtold by Clyde Kluckhohn who was teaching ucha class thathis sister

Jane had got into an extraordinaryilemma by "participating"

and "observing" ina "culturalrite" I think of theNavajos inwhichshe discovered shewas momently o be marriedLaughter) if he didn't

if hedidn't take more care so to speak. She was an extraordinary ady without exception. But I mean had she been lessobservant and moreparticipating she probablywouldn'thave been in

thatfix to beginwith. So that inotherwords I questionthatwe can getitso together inour thinkingf it thatwe don't

need otherwise to be there.

SPANOS: Againof

course the NewCritical stance is thestance

of disinterestedness disinterested ness and itgoes bythe term "objectivity." The poet and the reader or critic

according o this aestheticperspective shouldbe objective.And of

26








course thatterm svery rucial because it makes the experiencebeing articulatedbythepoet an object. Itobjectifies or in

myterms itspatializes existence which s processual which stemporal and can't finally e taken hold of manipulated ..

CREELEY: See Bill forexample whatmaybe a very pecious parallel but ifone sits say ina usual small citycourt for o

calledpetty riminals and sees thedisposition fthe "objective" judgevisavis thesepersons and sees otherwise he conductofa judge

who is lessabstract one knowswho is reallybeinguseful. Butthatkindof "objective" use of intelligence or perspective would be

veryuseless I think. In otherwords a doctor consideringsomepatient who hasa particular disease understandably oesn't

necessarilywant to be involvedwiththe person s person. Hewantsto say ifyou do this orthat you'll findyourself recoveringfrom hisparticularllness. But then I've beentold bydoctors

also thatone ofthehardest hingsprofessionally to rememberis that at a time whenhumanly hedoctor's resources re possi

blymostuseful iswhenhefeelshe has none e.g. when thepatientisgoing o die. Thisdoesn't at all meanthat he or sheshould take

overtheroleof thepossiblepriest ortheperson hus able to ritualize that nformation. But itdoes mean thatno informations

abstract thatyoudon't say "Well Bill you'vegot terminalcancer and now it'stimeformeto go home. I can't do anything

foryou." And a criticismhatproposesto be apartfrom hat whichitactually s involvedwith is to me totally bsurd. I cannot

believe ...

SPANOS: ... or the writingof poetry ...

CREELEY: I want to say almostdidactically that there s no information that does not havean affective content even if t'sblink

ing ights or numbers nrandom eries.

SPANOS: This of course activates at least nmyown mindanother very entralmetaphor which isso basic to Olson

to yourpoetry to thepoetry hatemerges out of Williams ndPound thenotion of poetry s discovery thenotion of poetry s

periplus..

CREELEY: Yes...

SPANOS: "Not as..." how does Poundput it inCanto LIX?

periplum, otas land looks on a mapbut as sea bordseenbymensailing.

27








Andyou'veseenthose old mapswhere theprocessofdiscovery isimmediate is ocal and itsaffective impact s there inthe

goddamned exaggerations the"distortions" of the linewhich re morereal so muchmorereal than themap that

homogenized and domesticated pace seenfrom hat disinterestedtechnologicaldistance ofthemapmaker who draws t fromhisdesk

hismetaphysicaldesk so to speak. This iswhy again Olson'smetaphor f Juande la Cosa inMaximus is so crucial o thepostmodern ontext. He celebratesColumbus' cartographer and his

mappemundebecause unlikeMartinBehaim:he

was there. Thetitlesaysitall: "On first ookingout throughJuande la Cosa's

Eyes." You pickthisup not interms f the metaphor ofJuande laCosa but ofseeingthingsfreshly. You makealot of it in a num

berofyour essays on Olson and all overtheplace in A QuickGraph ..

CREELEY: Yeah I lovethat: "He lefthimnaked/ heman said...."

SPANOS: Right. It'swhatHusserl alls the "phenomenological eduction."

CREELEY: Yeah:

He lefthimnaked,themansaid,and

nakednessiswhat one means

thatall startupto theeye and soulas though thad neverhappenedbefore

SPANOS: Exactly: "as though it had never/happened before ..." Andof course thisgenerates an attitude owards theantitheseswhich

everyone s kicking roundthesedays ever ince Derrida indeconstructing eidegger imself started o devalorize peech infavor fwriting parole in favor f &criture..

CREELEY: The thing...

SPANOS: That isto say goddamnit what theepistemologicalstance of Williams and Pound and Olson and

youand so many other younger contemporary oets generates isapoetry hat sfundamentallythecryof itsoccasion/Partof the res tself

and not about it." That's Wallace Stevens'phrase from An Ordinary

28








Evening n New Haven" but itappliesso muchmore it seemstome to the kind ofpoetry hatyou're"writing" a poetry that stosay which has its"source" inthespeechact as opposed to

writing as opposed to thepoem as something ou compose for heprinted page ...

CREELEY: I was thinkinghismorning intalking o my peopleI'd asked them to bring likethey ay to class any particularpoemthatseemedto them an instance hopefully an extraordinary nstance of the possibilities of poetry s an art some

thing hat's dearto them something hat's provocative to theirown sensesof thepossibility fwriting somethinghat constituted

for hem a measure f its resources and possible glory. And I

was struck hat Laughing) I think bout fiveor six thusbroughtintexts. Threeofthose fiveor six weretranslations and rather ndifferenttranslations. So that the initial say active

composition of thepoem had alreadybeen diluted once andtheydidn'tseemto be dismayed hat thiswas thecase. Thiswas theprocessofobjectifying. Herewas thepoem initially. It had been

objectifiedbythetranslation that s thusabstracted. Theywerereading t inthat situation and I remember I keptsaying:"Well what about somesituationof first onsciousness as a possi

bility?" admittinghat

youcould havean instance f translation

whichactuallywas far more nterestinghan thepoem initially possibly Mallarme's ranslation f the "The Raven" by EdgarAllanPoe possiblymore interestings a poem as such. And Pound's

texts seem to meverypossibly o. But inanycase what I'm tryingto say is I readthem notaggressively but frommyown inter

ests I readthem Bunting and I readthemPatrickKavanagh.And I love PatrickKavanagh'spoems although know them frankly

very poorly. I mean I haven't literally ota book of his inthehouse which it seemsto me isnothappy. Because I'm

really ttracted o him. And I recall whenOlsongotback from anInternational estivalof Poetry n London. I think t musthave beenaround1968 or 69 it was aroundthat time possibly little ater.

I asked him whatpoets inthat situationhad interested im andhe said the two mostdeliciously xtraordinary oets infact insomeways the absolute poetsoftheoccasion were Ungaretti and

PatrickKavanagh. He saidwhat was so extraordinary about bothmenwas thattheyread nno literary isposition. Theirwritingwas

inno wayattached to a literary olitics as was thewriting fAudenfor

xamplerathermore

sweetlythe

writingf

Spenderor

frankly thewritingfotherswho weretherefore involved. He said neitherperson read orthought fpoetry as anythingmorethanthis

act. And thehonortheyfelt n theart was extraordinary. He

29








said Ungaretti eadan an extraordinarilyimplepoemoftheseasons. Itwas sortofan incredibly sweet breeze blowingthrough hisrather tepid and constricted roup. A very implehuman ct of recognition so calmly and commonly put that

yourmind s literally blownaway by itsbeauty.

SPANOS: I getthesense bytheway of somethingike this inanumber fthepoems that you sent me from pain which

hopefully willget included nthis special issueofboundary2.Thereare several f thosewhich are so fundamental so basic

so naked as perceptions:

Acrossbay's loop

ofwhitecaps,smallseemingblackfigurest edge -

one,thesmallest,to thewatergoes.Others,behind,sitdown.

And the whole notionof the iterary ontextimply

doesn'tapplyis notapplicable except inthe sensethat someone who

knowspoetry brings to bear upon hisreading thosehabitual formal xpectationsof thetradition which are beingundercut

called intoquestion bythefreshness thenakedness of theperceptions and the language hatexpresses hem ..

CREELEY: I was recentlyt theCambridgeFestival nApril, 77 andthe people who really moved and delightedmethere wereoftwo

basic kinds. Theywereeither hose like Tadeusz R6zewicz the Po

lishpoet who were absolutelyfactsof humanexperience ofhaving lived life na particular event e.g. the Second WorldWar

and thesubsequentpolitical/social eality. Theywerenot proseletizing inany usualorglibway.Theyweresaying "I bear witness."There wereextraordinary oems ofthatorder constantly reoc

cupiedwith being staying knowing the conditionof being inaworld that was so often hostile and bleak. Theywereverymov

ing s such. That natureof poetry such as was there was to mymind verydear. Andthe otherwas wheretherewas some ab

solutely xtraordinaryreoccupationwith I'm going o say the materialconditionsofthe language tself as the work of the Frenchman JeanDaive thena beautifulyounger Scots poet Thomas H. Clarkwho writeswith sucha modesty and clarity that it's really ovely

30








it'ssweet and again it has this ovely fresh appetite as opposed sadly to writers who are much ofmy generation like GeoffreyHill the MercianHymns forexample which are a

heavy I would not denigrate is own abilities s a poet at all

but I would wonder f n that world let'ssay theirparticular valuing s not as mucha situation f literary olitics as it isan actual event.

SPANOS: I've been reading hispoems recently because someone MerleBrown from he Universityf Iowa in fact came

to Binghamtonhisspring and read an interestingaper on hispoetry.I must ay though that I findHill'spoetryvery "literary"with ittlereal awarenessof what I would call thecrisis f poetry

or at any rate with ittle nclination o interrogate to radicallyinterrogatehe forms nd the rhetoric he's received rom hisimmediateforebears. And inthis sense though t'spowerfulnmany

ways hispoetry s a throwback to another ime really toModernism.

CREELEY: I could muchrespect say a possibly purely iterarypoetry thatis a poetry hat uses as its material all the accumula

tionsof reading nd writing thathad beenwitnessed or gottothat was deliberately notdeliberately butwas possiblyunintentionally cranky nthatway. Some quick parallelmight e akind of hermeticrtist ike JosephCornell using incredible llu

sions and echoes of previous vents and patterning inmaking hushisown work. But I foundthedisposition in too manyof

thewriters there I mean it was likepeople hustling or authority ina rathermeager spectrum f event. Anotherpoet I found

extraordinarilytherwise was actually theone poet I thinkthatBasil Bunting ver specifically both husbanded and took onas an activeprotege was Tom Pickard an extraordinary oet.

And it's ust as Duncanwas saying we wereboth there theactualdelight inthepower of thisart without he least sentimentality isso distinctwhenyou meetwith t. And Tom Pickardhasthatpower. And he takes care of it. Again he has as Olsonwould say "both the attention and the care." But he of all

people would know thatyou don't learn t inthe usual manner.You practice t and you take care inthepractice and learnthrough

thepractice butyou don't acquire it. It's not a quantitativenformation. Andagain it comes from iving life unrelieved. I mean

goingforbroke I'd liketo say inall possible situations none'sexperience and notalways thinking "Willthisbe thepoem appropriate o the literary oliticalclimateofthe moment?" tc. Bunt

ing find an extraordinary oet inthatway. He's now 77.

31








And ofall the poets I've everknown I don't think ne's lived lifemore precisely nd humanly ommitted inall respects. Imean he's a poet with bsolutedistinction. At thesametime hislifehas notbeen caught nthat singular ttention. Bywhich

I mean all his life feeds that process and all that processfeeds his life. And he won't go to Cambridge r Oxfordany longer. He finds hemreallydistasteful.Laughing) He one time saidtherewas a time when Oxfordwould hire a personbecause ofhisor

her nformationbout a particularrea ofhuman ctivity orwhatever ncrement. That is you would be given situation or

a professorship at Oxford nthe late 1800's because youknew something. Now it'sonlybecauseyou "studied" it ina particular

school.

SPANOS: BasilBuntingwas at SUNY-Binghamtonnthespring f1971 ...

CREELEY: I know.He was ...

SPANOS: And a veryunhappy xperiencehe had there. No oneneither acultynorstudentswiththeexceptionof Milt Kessler was responding o hispresence. He was I think outside theirframe freference theirreceivedunderstanding of Modernpoetry.

CREELEY: It's sad ...

SPANOS: It'svery ad though I must ay near theend of hisvisithe read Briggflatts withthe Scarlattibackground which

was one of the most stunning eadings have ever encountered in

my ife. It was absolutelymagnificent.

CREELEY: Aproposof thefailure o respond o hispresence he pre

sentshisinformationt timesso casuallythat ifyou'renot particularly aware ofeither hepersons or thesituation he's recallingyou thinkhe's justanotherolderman wandering n about whathappenedto him someyears go whenyouweren'tborn. But ifyou

start isteningo whathe's actuallytalking f and about and to what

purpose he's an absolutely xtraordinaryman. I thinkhe's livedthehuman life as successfully as anyman I've met.

SPANOS: Whatyou're talking bout infact brings p another ermthatis pervasive in yourvocabulary critical nd poetic and

thatis the word "measure." Now the word "measure"appliedto the poetictradition recalls at least nmymind the

Platonicor morebroadly the logocentric notion of music held dearby

32








the Elizabethans and insistentlynvokedbytheMetaphysical oetsas itbeganto disintegrate thenotion of music in whichmeasure

isabsolutelydetermined yperceivingmeta ta physika fromGod'seye so to speak. I'mthinking forexample of Ulysses' peechabout the untuned tringnShakespeare'sTroilus nd Cressida or

SirJohnDavies' Orchestra:

Dancing,bright ady,thenbegins o be,When hefirsteeds,whereof heworlddid spring,The fire, ir, earth, nd waterdid agree,By Love's persuasion,nature'smighty ing,To leavetheirfirst isordered ombating,

And ina dance suchmeasure o observe

As all theworld theirmotion houldpreserve.

But obviously whatyou'redoing to that word so conceivedis deconstructingt. You're making hatwordmeansomething ery

different fromwhat t has meant inthe logocentricradition.

CREELEY: It's see again one tends to get ocked into thecircumstance ofwhatdoes it meanto me. Perfectlyelevant and

useful question. However there would seem to me

necessarysome

acknowledgementn

Bunting'sense that is as sun

rising n an acknowledged and thatthe me isnot theonlytermofthat situation'sreality muchas being old as a kid "Don'tplaywiththecat thatway you'regoing o hurt t." I mean the

cat has a life oo and you haveto humanly recognize hat thatyou can't live nan egocentricworldentirely. So thatmeasureagain really omesback to Olson's senseof "testing/ ndmissing/

someproof." I've recalled forexample ina book likeWordswhat seemingly in largepartunconsciously was on mymind

waswhat is it intheworld thatpermits a measure f

theworld? What can one use as notobjectification butaslocus? How do you locate? Location itseemsto me is a muchmore

usefulword than I mean where is it? How is it?What s it? When s it? All ofthose kindsof questions. IfI'm insome respects thecontrol erm ifI'm that which tacts

upon and that which inturn acts upon it whatarethewaysinwhich knowit? And how can I therefore posit t as

existing? In so far s I know texists I both intuit nd recognize tsexisting. Thiswas what was fascinatingo me inWittgenstein's contest

withMoore overMoore's"empirical pistemology." Moore satisfied himself ysaying "O.K. thetree exists i.e. I can go upand put myhand on it. Therefore" you know almost likeBishop Berkeley "it exists nsofar s I experience tsexisting."

33








And Wittgensteinnstantlyaid "Well this would be all verywellif one could positoneself s sucha reliable index. But thenmaybeyou didn'tsee it (Laughing) ormaybe it fooled you. It

wasn't a tree itwas an elephant's eg or something." So that

I didn't want let'ssay to put myselfntoan increasingly abstract ituationofexperience whichwas frankly mytendency s a youngman

to become more and moreabstract. Whenever'm talkingwithpersonswho are involvedwith say humanbehavior psychologistsrpsychiatrists thething heyremark instantly apropos ofmyways

ofsaying hings r of expressingmyself isthatmyhabits nthatexpression revery bstract. I mean I tend to be very bstract. It isn't

thatI'm avoiding he "subject." But I tend to think roundit ortoenclose itso as a thing hought that thefeelings therwise

thecase are curiouslymuted or diffuse. They ofcoursemightwellsay "But you maybe onlycoloring thepoems."And of course there heyhaveme because I think wrotethe

poems insomeexperienceoffeeling. But all I have as evidence isthe poem and I can't argueanymorethantheycan whetherit's an artifact ffeeling or whether t's an artifact fthought. I

don't particularly ant to make the the udgment. It reallygets ocked in a honeyhead so to speak. I was readingColeridge

these lastfew weeks aproposofa friend's hesis. God thedilemmasofabstract

houghtare

just terrifying.You see where

thesad agencyofopiumaddiction plus an extraordinarilyrticulatemind could land inexistence.

SPANOS: Keats said and again I'm sureOlson was verymuchawareof it that Coleridge throughhis obsessive b

stractness his "irritable eaching after act and reason" his lackof

NegativeCapability of being ble to remain in uncertainties mysteries doubts" missedShakespeare "would letgo by"

beautifullyronicwords "a fine solated verisimilitude caughtfrom he Penetralium f mystery.."

CREELEY: Itseems to mehe sadlymissed thevery significancefhisown composition e.g. "The Rimeofthe AncientMariner" Laughing) inwhich theaccretions revery nteresting. Whathe does

is to add to it inshort.Andthey're nteresting. But I wonder ifheactuallyknew notso muchwhathe was doing but I wonder f

he wasn't working n the poemas an artifact as opposed to

expanding hepoem as an information. I wonder f he thoughthewas

making t better insome diminished sense. WhenWordsworth

suggestedhe leave itout in the second editionof theLyricalBalladshe apparentlymadeno objections he felt t was quite reasonable.

34








SPANOS: To come back to "measure" for Plato again musicMousik6 and byextension measure isvery rucial.

Now similarly or let me put it thisway one of theproblemshavewith Olson'sMaximusPoems isthe tremendous valorizing

of theeyes

polis iseyes

Eyes,& polls,fishermen,& poets

or ineveryhumanhead I've known sbusy

both:theattention, ndthecare

so fewhave thepolisintheir

ye ...CREELEY: Andhe ends

Thereareno hierarchies, o infinite, o suchmany s mass,there reonlyeyes inall heads,to be lookedout of

SPANOS: Right and of course inthemetaphysical tradi

tion sincePlato theeye has beenvalorized overall the othersenses. This isa point bytheway thatHeideggermakesoverand overagain inhisde struction fWestern hilosophy. Ob

viously Olson meanssomething erydifferent inhisappeal to theeyeandyou meansomething ifferent invalorizing he eye. Buthow

wouldyou rationalize he or howwouldyou interpretthe similar mphasis hegives o vision and hearing theeyeandthe voice? Is it theeye in thesense ofself e.g. "I see" whichis the ..

CREELEY: No I think t'sthefactual physical likeZukofsky'sphysical ye. I thinkwhat attractsOlson is that theeye isthe

primaryenseforthe function of a primate thatthe eye isthe

35








crucial input factor. Forthe poet hearing thencomes very very insistently as another crucial sense.It'sthecollector. It's where he phenomenality f the outerworld can wherethat information an be gathered thea

gencyof theear. Previous o thought I think hat's thepointthat again theeyedoesn'tknowwhat itsees itsees it

primarily.

SPANOS: I understand. Inotherwords whereas inthe traditioninPlato thewholeobject isto transform the entirebody

all thesenses into one allperceiving or re collecting ye i.e.so thattheworld becomesspatialized ..

CREELEY: Yeah, butsee that's ..

SPANOS: ... Olson incontrast is reallyde constructing isn't hethatPlatonic notionof encompassing ye and integrating the

eye ina much closerrelationshipo the otherbodilyfunctions?

CREELEY: He was fascinatedby thescientific proposalthat thephotocells inthe skin were ikelittle yes ..

SPANOS: Ohyes

beautiful.Merleau-Ponty

alks about the incarnateknowledge f thebody.

CREELEY: ... that all of themwerecapable of individual daptationthatthephysical urface f one's bodywas a densecluster f

minute photocells all having hepossibility fthat consciousnessin thesingular ..

SPANOS: Wheredoes he refer o this nhiswriting? Or is itsomething he said to you?

CREELEY: It seems to me hedoes somewhere. I can't quicklyrecall possibly nProprioception but morepossibly n that"Human Universe"piece wherehe's talking bout judgmentand recognition. He insisted forexample and I thoughtusefully that judgment s instant upon recognition that hemomentyou see something your response o it is udgment. Youdon'twait to think bout it. You mayrevise hat udgment or alter t

but yourfirst esponse o recognizingt is an immediateudgment. Butto come back

specificallyo your

questionabout

Olson's sense ofeyes ...

SPANOS: I wasn'tasking he questionabout eyes inany gratui

36








tousway because in that crucialphrasefrom he MaximusPoemshe uses two terms which re central o Plato and thewhole

Western Heidegger alls it theonto-theological radition: "Polis/iseyes .."

CREELEY: It's almost as though he tacitlywantsto correctPlatobysaying "Polis is eyes." It isn'tan abstract situation

ofeyes it'san absolute or functional activity feyes. Peopleare again literally physicalfunction. As he says "Thereare

only eyes inall headsto be looked out of." Thereisn'tanymore. "Thereisno suchmany s themass." "There is no hierarchy" tc. etc. There

isno systemwhich can supersedeor otherwisebe thecase butthe factual xistenceof thesehumanbeings with he factualpossi

bility f their senses e.g. literally heir yes thattheycan seebear he oved the idea of "bear witness." One time years gowhenwe werefirst corresponding he had come upon I think

a veryprimary I thinkhe proposed t evenas the first ecord frecorded peech. I can't itwas previous o Sumerian I

want to say inanycase thefirst ecordhewas thusproposingas being hefirst o me was simply hestatement f apparently

theforeman fa mine haft saying "I John foreman ofmineshaft X do saythis." And he loved it thatthefirstrecorded peech as hewas therefore

thinkingf it was

anin

stance ofbearingwitness. Thiswasdirectly an instance f bearingwitness. "I haveseenthis. Mineeyeshave seentheglory." Soit isn'tabstract r symbolic it'sfactual literal.He loved in likesense that he lovedthatsenseof Herodotusgoing o take a lookforhimself Laughing) ..

SPANOS: "I would be an historian s Herodotuswas, looking/ oroneselfforthe evidence of/what is said . .." he says in "Letter 23" of TheMaximusPoems. He also makes a greatpointof thatHerodotan m

pulse intheSpecial ViewofHistory.

CREELEY: Because to him therewas no alternative as heput it but thegoingon thatwhathappened would have to be ab

solutely the notsimply theexperienceof it but therehadto be thewitness f it. Andyou gotthewitness f it through he

transfer then ofthatexperience. That is I could tellyou whatI had seen and youwouldhave it inthatrespect oo. But

youcouldn't haveit unlessone of us had actually ..

SPANOS: It's theperspective f Juande la Cosa again the Poundianperiplus gain inphenomenological ocabulary theperspectiveafter hephenomenological eduction..

37








CREELEY: Yeah. One time when we wereall living p inVancouver intheearlysixties justby beautiful hance watchingTV one evening suddenly we werewatching nd listeningoa conversation etweenStefansson theArctic xplorer and a now

also quite old sea captain a Swede who had been one ofthementhathad helped transport Stefanssonup to thisplace in theBering traits inthatnorthernrea. And theywererecallingthe difficulties physically oftransportingmen and supplies nthat

partof the world thefreezes nthe winter and the difficulties of ustbeingthere t all. Andthen thisbeautifully absolutelyunanticipatednostalgicmoment theystarted ecalling helook of the particular ay and it's delicious. I mean youknow possibly a halfdozen personsfrom ur world willever see

that. Butsuddenly theyhad thisextraordinarily not ustnostalgia but this beautiful alert "You saw it too" (Laughing)justthisextraordinarymoment fcommunicated sense of sharing..

SPANOS: That'spolis ...

CREELEY: That's"polis/ seyes" right. There isno bondotherthanthat...

SPANOS: And the poem too ispolis

isn't t? Thepoem

asanalogyof theexperienceofcommunity as bearingwitness ..

CREELEY: Yeah and lovely na sensethat Ginsbergmakes.He one time was saying thathispoemsarea kindof curious time

capsule inso far s you can open them ater and have the informationas say someone else those "recorders geshence" inWhitman'ssense or Stendhal's. I can read now at this"point" in

timeand space and share literally articipatenthe emotions thatwereGinsberg's beingthere nd then. I feelthat likea friend

in England has beensendingus potsherds and coinsthat hediscoversvery asually inthefieldadjacentto where he lives

outsideofCambridge. And theseare coins datingbacktoabout 200 B.C. Andthe coins are the classicpenny kind of coinand you can feelthem you know the Romansoldiery probablyjustdropping mall loose changeout of theirpockets the sub

stanceof the potsherds you can suddenly feel the human condition the hand you can really it isn't entimental butyou

can actually feel it ...

SPANOS: Aproposofthis you'vegot to read ifyou haven'talready"The Origin f theWorkof Art" byHeidegger because he talks

about Van Gogh'spainting f a number f paintings hat he did

38








of a peasant'spairofshoes and you know he's sayingvirtuallythesamething about them thatyou are about the coinsand thepotsherds ...

CREELEY: It's hard indeed not to almost instantly formeat least to sentimentalize hose moments. But thevery

fewtimeswhenI again almost without alwayswithoutplansuddenlybecamepresent o it it'sso extraordinary e.g. one

time n Southern Mexico up in San Cristobal weweredrivingthrough goingdownto Guatemala where was to teach and

we stoppedto pay respects to an old timekindofadventurerself-stylednthropologist named oh gosh hewas a Daneactually as I recall Bloom. He was called PeterBloom

anyhowhislast namewas Bloom. But inanycase we weretalking he had this ovelykind of showman style with hisinformation. His placewas now used as a primarytaging situationfor expeditions nto thepeninsula. So theUniversityfChicagoand Harvard'sPeabody Museum itspersonswereall there getting isadvice and mapsand stuff to go in Pancho Bloom FranzBloomwas hisname. So inanycase he said "How would you like

to meet a Mayan?" I said "Terrific " He said "Actuallytheman isa Lacandon Indian. He's the first erson verto come out ofhisparticular ituation ever. The first human

beingof that

particularcluster everto go beyondits statedboundaries and tomoveout of its area ofhabitation into this world." AndI said "That would be an honor indeed if inmyAmerican ense

itwouldn'tbotherhim. If twouldn'tbe an imposition uponhim I would be honoredto meet sucha humanbeing." And so hesaid "He's in thenextroom I'll ask him to come out." Somomently herewas thisman anotherhumanbeing standingthere and inno sense"primitive" inthesensethathisteeth

werefiled thesometime magination ftheprimitive caveman

just another extraordinary humanbeing. I did again theAmerican hing of putting ut myhand. And he looked at it

and then and I was veryrelieved. (Laughter)Whatwas extraordinary bout thisman was that all thesenses wereabsolutelyalert all overthebody inthesamewayyou'd experience he situation

of a so-called wildanimal as opposed to a domestic animal.I mean thesensory ystemwas absolutely lert notworriedbut hewas entirely here. I've nevermeta humanbeingwhowas so completely wherehe was notthat he knewwherehewas orwas de

termined o staythere butwas absolutely alive inthemomentofeach instant. I mean therewas no abstraction nhim. Itwasfantastic. I thought "You can do it." I mean youcan arrive t aconsciousness hat's present s opposed to one that'sthinkingbout

39










SPANOS: Oh that's such a marvelous hing. Let me read it:

Ifwhenmywife ssleepingand thebabyand Kathleenaresleepingand the sun isa flame-whiteiscinsilkenmistsabove shining rees,if inmynorthroomdance naked,grotesquelybeforemymirrorwavingmyshirtroundmyheadand singing oftly o myself:

"I am lonely, onely.I was born to be lonely,I am best so "If I admiremyarms,myface,my houlders, lanks, uttocksagainst heyellowdrawn hades,-

Who shallsay I am notthehappygeniusof myhousehold?

All right. Let me askyou howthissuspension fthe knowledge fthe mind infavor f a knowledge fthebody so to speak

translatesntoyourown poems. I think I can see itoperative all overtheplace inthe form as wellas thecontent ofyourpoetry

but I'd liketo hear howyou yourself onceive of that translation.

CREELEY: Well there's he world. And livingnthe worldthere re things things ome to mind orcome to be said

orfeelings onstantly notso muchfluctuate although heydidimmensely whenyounger. But it'smy belief ifnot

myunderstanding that very ittle planto do is as interesting s what I do do. Infact I don't think nything planto doisas interestings what I do do orwhatcomes thus to happen.

I don't feelthat it's therefore stupid to make the obviousplansof usual life that s plansto getto bed at a certain ime

ifyou'regoing o get up inthemorning or plansto haveenoughmoney nhandto do whatever. I don't think hatkindof provision

isstupidat all. But thesenseofdesigning ne's life or ofhaving n overridingntentionwithrespect o one's life seemsto metobe pretty acitly ifnot absolutely overtly disastrous. I'mstruck forexample with omeone as T. S. Eliot. When sked

41








about his intentionswithrespect o The WasteLand hecan answerquicklyand clearly "intention s not a word I would usewithrespect

to poetry certainly ot withrespect o myown poems norfranklyto anypoems ."

SPANOS: I think infact that TheWasteLand has been entirelymisunderstood inthatrespect. mean critics especiallythe

NewCritics despitetheir intentional allacy" have read thepoemas if ts structurewas somehow pre-planned.t's worth aying inpass

ing that this is one of thepoems inthe canon of Modernism thatdesperatelyneedsdeconstructing..

CREELEY: The critics fthat time presumedEliothad a "plan"

but thefactthatPoundedits the text into thepoemtheyare readingetc. reallymakesyourpointvery learly. Whathappens isso much more engaging and compelling and useful to me inthehumancondition than what wassupposed to happen as an inten

tion. So I would think f mywritings a kindof manifest fnot so much again Olson would be dismayed whenpersons

wanted to identifyMaximus s being n egocentricprojection f hisownvalues of himself.And he'd say "No No No It'ssimply possibility f material. I mean it's me' because I'm here thisthing s here so it'smyagency forthe recognitionf whatelse is

here. I'm thematerial f mypoem I'm notthe centerof it insome egocentric demand." Thatto me makesabsolutesense as

did Marisol hesculptor saying "Working lone at night had no othermodel I used myself." I would use myselfna like sense. I

wouldn'tparticularly aluemyself moreor less. I don't know attimes if don't get stuck n some falsehumility because I do

havepride inwhatI can at times do. And I have as Basil Buntingwould emphasize a conscious senseof craft. But I do know

also that nwriting I have morethe habit of thisactivity thanI do

the conscious decisionof it. It would be likeasking a tennisplayer inmid-act whyhethought o do that at that moment. I don'tknowthat I could itseemsto methat a lotof attentionhas been

given t but I don't knowthat I have the consciousdecision always ofwhat I thuscollect as information. Itseems to me to be

much more able if t isn't nterrupted ysome insistentlyconscious decisionapropos its use. I knowthat say during heVietnamwar I wantedinsistently to write omethingpecificallynvolvedwiththat political horror. It justdidn'twork. The moment

thewillentersfor me itgetsreally muddy

anddifficult..

SPANOS: ShermanPaul inthat I think veryfine piece "ALetter n Rosenthal's Problemsof RobertCreeley'" inthespecial is

42








sue ofboundary2 on the oral impulse ncontemporary merican

poetry ..

CREELEY: I thought hat was a beautifulpiece. I'm verygratefulo

him.

SPANOS: ...talks there bout the first oemof PiecesLet mepull it out ...

As real as thinkingwonders reatedbythe possibility

forms.A periodat theend of a sentencewhich ...

CREELEY: ... began...

SPANOS:

began t wasinto a present,a presence

sayingsomethingas itgoes.

You read it I can't...

CREELEY: Yeah it's a kind offunny cho of Zukofsky. You

know the beautiful lose of thatshort novella thatbookcalled "It Was"?

SPANOS: No I don't.

CREELEY: It's a beautifulpiece (Reads thepiece fromPieces). If I havethebook I'll showyou instantlyGoes to the bookcase). It's alittlebook (returning ith t) thatCid Cormanpublished. The

sentencegoes

on fora hundred nd some oddpages.

Waita minutenow I've gotthewrong damn book. This is actuallytwo books. Waita minute Yeah "It Was." No it's

a short story excuse me ...

43








Itwas fineweather nmid-August hen I awokeanxiousto go on writinghestory hatin thedarkhoursdid not letme rest.

I had promisedmywife notto stay up and

strainmyeyes,and had failedher.So I was happyto beup before hewas,to tellherthat I was nottired....

Thenhegoes on you know you know ..

We lived henoppositethepark.... Thanks to theparkcommissioner. he parkacrossthestreet, he early unand themorninghadethrownbetweentall old trees,temptedme to go downstairs.... I wantedas I said to

write, ut noton paper.... The sentencekeptmeup allnight....

As he says he "wants itunobtrusiveo hispace." This isa beautiful I learnedmuch from his.

I wantedas I said to write,but not on paper. I hardlyeverfoundtheparkhelpful o writing n paper,eveninfall andwinterwhenno one was there, specially f were

writing rose.Thistime t was the sentenceopeningthe

lastpartof a story hadworkedon for months: sen-tence as is oftenworkedoffpaperfirst. he pace of nar-rative nd interestncharacter o notreadilyhelpthewriter's andto set down a sentenceof thatorder.For

though haractersmust akethingsntheir wn stridesomewhere nhisstory hewriter annothold backthissentence hat udgesthem....

To bear witness again.

He wants t unobtrusiveo hispace and thecharactersthat caused him to write.The difficultys to judgewithout

seeming o be there,with finalitynthe wordsthatwillmakethemcasual and partofthestory tself, xceptper-hapsto another ge.

The sentence kept me up all night .... The halt

seems ikely o be permanentn the worstof thegrindwhenthe wordsof an insoluble entencewritten own,

written ver,crossedout,add up to indecisionsmakingsituations nd charactersmpty. feel I havenotthesenseinwhich, longwiththestory, must ive- and seem

merely o glanceat a watch.

44








This story was a story of our time .... I dustedthe bookshelves..

He goes on and on ...

Still anxiousto getbackto my tory, becamebusystraighteningut things bout the house. Somehowwecould never eaveitwith henecessary isarrangementsofthenight nsettled....

I'm verymuch ikethat ..

I dustedthebookshelves nd thedeskofunfinished

maple,and a small tableofthe samewood overwhichhung large andscapepaintedbyour close friend nanother ity:hewasworking n a "Defense" job -had madeourwallscheerful when he had thetime- andifhewerecoming o see us thatSunday I would gladlyhaveputoff he sentence tillon mymind. watered heplants; hencoveredthe couchwiththe white cottonprinthandblocked nblue withearlyAmerican cenesofa navalbattle, ndians,date palms,mules nd elephants.

Why lephantshappenedto be drawn nto scenes on au-

thority epicting hehistory fSt. Augustine, lorida,haveneverbeenable to answerwiththeknowledge fhistory have.ThoughI was stillthinkingfmy tory,regretteds alwaysthatwritingoo often eaves ittletime forthepleasureof lookingup answers o theun-familiar. foundmyself aying hesentence loud.

- You were good to me.

"You weregood to me." (Laughter) And you know knowinghim

I knowthat's notcontrivance. It's a curious uggesting and reflecting and moving to get to where not to what's inmind osay thatyou can't say it inwaysthatyou want to say it only.

It'sgotto be come to as wellas recognized s there o be said.

SPANOS: Again itseems to me that theetymology f"metaphysics" iscrucialhere.The sentence especially nthepasttense

thewas is a perceiving ofexistence from he end thatis to

sayallatonce

spatially.It's

arecollection

a re collecting intranquillity thetranquillityfdistance of what s essentially dispersed occasional so to speak. Andthiswonderfulpiece byZukofsky constitutes beautiful de struction ordecon

45








struction of thatobjectification that construction of theprocessof living inorder o release t from healienating closure of

thecoercivepasttense. Or maybebetter inorder o dis close itand thus as Heideggerwould say afterHeraclitus to bring t

near ..

CREELEY: I hear. Right...

SPANOS: It's ovely. And of course Sherman ismaking hesamepoint I think about that first oem inPieces whenhe

says:

Creeleydiscards hesentence, r syntacticalprescription

(as, forexample, nthetwo fragmentshatcomprise hepoem),and bytransformingnd,associatedwiththepasttense,pasttime, nd rememberingnwhichtheself sno

longern itsoccasion,comes into thepresent nd theveryactivity fthe poem. The initial,necessary nd therapeu-ticact isto become "a presence"- one fullypresent ndinmotion, saying/ omething/s itgoes." Inthisway,he avoidsstasis, ives n,explores, nd worksthroughhissituation.

I also like his all too brief eference to themeaning f thetitle Pieces ...

CREELEY: Pieces yeah...

SPANOS: ... withall the connotations fdispersal of the breaking f

theOne intothemany Identity nto difference. And also I

like the continuity suggested ythis inmymind withyour

earlierwork with forexample thetitleofyoursecond book ...

CREELEY: Words...

SPANOS: Words not the Word butwords...

CREELEY: ... but words ...

SPANOS: ... with again all the implications f dispersal ofthe

dispersal t the "fall" and shatter of thecomprehensiveogos

pictureinto

pieceswords the ultimatekeyto which s in

finitely eferred.

CREELEY: Yeah. You can see themflying or like senses

46








ofthe Thesaurus or something whereone goes into two intothreeintofour. Well Zukofsky again wasdelightful to me as a

youngerwriter. That pointofhis thatone could spenda wholelifetime discerning hilosophically thedifference betweenthe

two articles "a" and "the" . . . (Laughing)

SPANOS: Yes you refer o thismodality fdispersal n ...

CREELEY: I thought "Righton. That's very rue." Youcould spenda lifetime consideringwhat order of world s ineach

case proposed and whereverhere s a natural omingtogether fthetwo. You know "There is a dog loose in the neighbor

hood." But ifyou say "There is a dog loose ina neighborhood"

you'vegota differenteality..

SPANOS: Right ..

CREELEY: Anyhow I don't recallthat I was thinking consciously of Louis but I'm damn surethat'swhere thoseopeninglines fromPieces camefrom. Because thepoemgoeson:

No forms ess

thanactivity.

All words -

days - or

eyes -

orhappeningisan eventonlyfor he observer?

You see that's myargumentwith he objectivecritics.

happeningis an eventonlyfor he observer?

No onethere.

There's no one there husto observe"Everyone/here." Andthen it begins to be you know

47








Insideand out

impossiblelocations -

reachingnfrom ut-

side,outfrom n-

side - as

middle

onehand.

Yeah thatwas the first etermined ense. Yeah itwas inthatrespect an intention to writewithout verbearing decisionsabout thecoherence ..

SPANOS: ... from hesentence working irectly ut intothe wholepassage and book ...

CREELEY: Yeah. Therewas no book inmind as thiswas beingwritten. At one point I think theeditorat Scribners then

wrote to ask me ifI had sufficientoems inhand to constitute anotherbook and I readthrough ndthought "Yeah

I reallydo." I readprettymuchto theend ofwhat I hadwrittenandthought this is a tracking f timefactually not

onlytime this s a tracking of a lifebeing ived and moreor less

of it is not the point and thatending thatcomes to be thereis there so to speak. And I thought "That's really t."

Whatdo you do,whatdo you say,whatdo you think,what do you know.

Whatever ow comes will move notaway butwill moveelsewhere.Yeah I guessthebooks not the books butthewriting

to me is very useful humanly justthat treifies ensesoflife lived probablymorethan do other realitieswithin t.What 'mtryingo say is that senses again ofthings wewanted to do whether r not done don't paradoxically add up

48








to muchat all. It isn'tthatone's dismayedbythem or cynical to say"Is thatall?" Things I trulywanted to do e.g. I wanted

to go see Wordsworth's house I wantedto see the Lake Country hisspring. Andwe did. And itwasterrific. I mean itwas

absolutelygratifyingand pleasing s a place despitetourists and shiftsand changes to see hisgravestone and think fColeridge nd

Dorothy forexample to see thoseextraordinary hills heyclamberedabout on and equallyto see where Cuthbert St.

Cuthbert in Lindesfarne theHoly Islandon the east coastthat was terrific or simply o see Basilagain sittingn a room

was as always a delight. But had I not done it I don'tthink t would have I would haveprobablymisseddoing it or onlywantedto havedone it but it'swhat I've justremarried and

I could not humanly ualify how it was I happenedeverto meetmywife much ess I don't mean to sentimentalize or to thusso quicklyresolvepreviousrelationships. But I lovethepeople I

have livedwith whether 'mnow livingwiththem or not. I'm not atall sentimental factually. I usedto carry nmind a kindof

aggressive sentence from Herodotus characteristically thatreally was dear to me. At times would proposethisto people

I livedwith. They'd say "That's a rather heapwayto think fpresent eality." t's simply at thatpoint whenHerodotusisgiving hisaccount ofexplorations to discover hesource ofthe

Nile. The particular roupthat'sout therewandering round tryingto discover his place is Egyptian and there repowersat court thatdon't want thisexploration o takeplace. They'retryingo discourage t. So they proposeto these men that

verypossibly theirhouses and theirwives and their hildrenand their uthority back in Cairo are all beingwipedout while

they'rewandering roundup here and thattheirvery conditionas men e.g. theirfamilies are being thus dispersed and takenfromhem. Andone of themore aggressive and pleasant it

seemsto meat least ofthepeople simply clutcheshistesticlesand says "As longas we havethese we have families." Laughter)Well he obviously "meant" that one way. To me whatitcomes

to mean isthatas longas one has thefunction one hasthe life.As longas you can see there'llbe somethingo look at. And as

longas you feeldrawn o this orthat humanactivity you almostwithoutyourwill willget t. And to discover omeonewhodoes notrelate o you as some awfulconvenience degrading in

deed to both herand yourself you havethepossibility f living.I don't reallywant specifically nymore hanthat. It's

you know I was thinkingfthat situation n England I gotso bored and so irritated ith he pretensions f some ofmyold

friends ven. I'm sad to relate that some ofthemseemedalmost

49










ing ikethat would obviouslybe where t'shappening. Laughing)The subsequent again we'rethinking so didactically

or thetendency isto think o didactically f two extraordinarydifferentracks ofdevelopment. Consciousness seemsto be signifi

cantdevelopment evenas Learyput it and I think ignificantly.He said "Isn't ita ridiculous fact that nour habits socially

and governmentally we tendto givedecisive uthorityo personswhosefactualorganicbrainfunction sabout 20 or 30 percent f its

actual' capacity as a usual brain? Wegive thisextraordinarypowerto personswhose abilities o think inorganic erms have

been verymuch reduced." Be thatas itmay thepoint to meisthat the developing fthought would only be interestingto me inso far as it could resolve what Ginsberg says

yes,yesthat's what

I wanted,I alwayswanted,

I always wanted,to return

to thebodywhere was born.

Notto go back intothewomb butactuallybe thephysical ventof life one obviously is.

SPANOS: Heidegger alls that a repetitionLaughter) the paradoxical notion of "development" whichadvancesby returningo primor

dial origins. Wiederholung a circularitywhich snot viciousi.e. recollective. Pound calls it"making tnew"...

CREELEY: Yeah (Laughing). I can see...

SPANOS: It's a rejection f a linear notion ofdevelopment.And again comingbackto our referenceo thehermeneutic ircle

muchearlier we know from hebeginning butonly preontologically so to speak. Weknow butdo notknowunlesswe become deeplyand totally nvolved orengaged interested unless as Heidegger utsit we "leap into the circlewholly nd primordially." Werepeat or what s thesamething

we retrieve onstantly and thatactivity f repetition or retrieval

generates reater nd greater notknowledge but awarenessphenomenologicalwarenessofbeing of whatwe "know" fromtheverybeginning because we are we are be ings. Thiskindof circularunderstandingsn't finally a spatialunderstanding as

51








forexample the NewCriticalversion f circular mythic recollective thinkings because phenomenological ircularitys nterested notdis interested. It's insearch finally of a temporalofan incarnate not an eternal and abstract and distancedknow

ledge.

CREELEY: See I live ntheworld and I have happily friendsI've knownforyears. But I don't havea very tablegeographic location. I mean I liveherepartof theyear. Therearefriends nd neighbors s the ladywe metcoming n inthegrocerystorebelow who've known me really uite intimately frommylivinghere and know meonlyfrommy ivinghere. It isn'tthat I'm hiding nother ifefrom hem. But thepoint s my ifedoesn't

changeparticularly ingoing o NewMexico nordid itchangeparticularly ingoing o Spain lastspring. Butthepoint s I don'tresisthaving n historical identity as a person ivingna

place fora significantength f time. But I don'thave one. Sothat whenI meetpeople thus old friends they reassert a historyof me. The mostdramatic nd interestingccasion of itwaswhenI'd leftNew Hampshire. I first ivedthere as a youngman

with my wifethen and family. We'd been there bout threeyearsand become literally intimate with these people and circum

stancesof theplace

had this old farm we weretrying

obring

ackinto productive hape etc. Then we left hat we went awayfirst o France wherewe livedfortwo years and another hildwas

born then we wentto Spain and then I was momently o go toBlack Mountain. I had now returned o New Hampshire to pickup an old truck and odds and ends I'd leftwithfriends here and I

went nto thisgarage thatI'd gone intomany imes when we lived here.I hadn't been thereforthreeyears orfouryears maybe. My

lifehad been you know cataclysmic great awful all the dimensions fhuman experience. I walkinto thisgarage nd see ab

solutely s expected thehabituesof thegarage. Theywereallthere. And one ofthem ooksup looks at me and says "AhBob I haven't eenyou aroundlately." (Laughter) That was all.There was no invitationo tellthemwhathad happened. I was instant

ly back intheirpattern. I might avesaid "But but I was livingnSpain" butthey'd say "I don't knowanythingbout thoseplaces."

It was curiously ffectionate. I mean I could haveprobablyborrowedmoney or told them of some immediate need I had of

that place. But to try o rehearse orthemwhere 'd beenother

wise forgett. So I became the person hattheyremembered.Andtheydidn'teven remember that I wasn'tthereyesterday orwas it threeyears go? Forget t. We'rehere. Or seeingneighbors come back into this environment an olderman one day

52








appeared inthestreet and a friendwas up herewith me. We'djustgoneout to go somewhere and we'd metthis man and hesaid

"Could you possibly tell mewhere uch and such a man ives?" Andhegavehisname. Wedidn'tknowthe man. So he said he'd been

awayforfourteen r fifteen ears had grownup in thisneighborhoodand hewas now returning. His wifehaddied and he'd been livingn

San Diego and hewas comingback. Rathermodest old suit coatsneakers nd stuff witha littlewhitebagwithhispossessions. So Itook him nto the store. I said "I'm surethey'llknow." In aninstant he was completely ocated. Theyknewexactlywheretheguyhewas lookingfor ived and who he was himself. What 'm sayingonlyis that there re livesone lives in relation o the accumula

tionofthe historical atterns thus stabilized or recognized the

histories that permit eople to have locations other han the moment omoment xistence. All the relationships all the thingswe usehumanly o identify urselves as being significantlyere. At thesametime there's ll the factual eventofbeinghere whichmay

or maynotcoincide. I knowthat witholderpeople as I beginmyself o getolder I remember lovelyyoungerpoet said tomeonce with absolutelybitter but incredible ccuracy he

said "I'm getting lder butyou'regetting ld" (Laughter). I thought"Righton " because that'swhathe meant "I dig it " And ifoneused

languagehat

preciselyhe'd

probablybe

interestingno matter

whathis emotional context. In anycase I'm not interestedndeveloping inthe sense ofgetting somewhere. I do hear always and insistently Pound's point that after 0 as he thenwas saying you can't keepyoureyeson all thesprouting corn.That is thiswas aproposofpeople askinghim forhelp or judgment asto their ctivity. He said "If you'regoing o geton withyourownwork you've reallygotto do it." And therefore insome trepi

dation I beganto think "What the hell s mywork? I'm a poet butwhat do I do inso far s I'm a poet?" And I thought things

would liketo do would be to enact as Olson might ay ormakeactual ifonlyformyown experience of it thepatternsand senses of person in relationships workthatforvari

ous reasons I havehad to yieldbecause I was so preoccupiedbythedailyshift f relationshipswiththefamily and children and myself

inthat maelstrom ften happyat times butalso at times verypainful. So I'd liketo I suppose I'd liketo be bothmoreaggressivengetting o work withthispreoccupation you might ay

but also to be more active nreflection.

SPANOS: I detected in a number f thepoemsthat you sent mefrom pain a very real sense of a veryreal awareness

ofgrowing ld ofgrowing ld and a kindof it'salmost

53








a Yeatsian awareness of whatHeideggermight all the breaking of the instrument whichgenerates real perception.When heinstrument reaksdown when to use Heidegger'smetaphor inBeingand Time when thehammer s a piece ofequipmentbreaks then

you know...

CREELEY: ... that you're holding a real hammer ...

SPANOS: ... thenyou beginto really ee whatthehammer is all about.Whatyou took forgranted whatthus ayhidden nhabit sud

denlycomesout of concealment discloses tself nall itsprimordiality.Forexample ...

CREELEY: (Laughing) Yeah, I know thatyou'vehad it.

SPANOS: ... comingbackto an earlierreferenceo thesepoemswhere he perception sso fresh so simple so elemental so

primordial I geta very trong eeling hat yourawarenessofdeathof aging thebreaking of thebody thebreaking fthe in

strument hasgenerated new power inyour voice a

quiet rich andgenerouspower I hear nthespaces between thestarkwords

When he light eavesand sky'sblackno nothingto look at,

day's done.That's it.

CREELEY: It's a shift. In otherwords as a kid having o realize

unlikeotherkids I'd lost an eye I'd physically been hurtnothurt nthesenseof aching or inpain but I'd been

changed let'ssay insome physicalfact inwaysthat was notthe

commonexperience. So thatthat ina sense was as a younger man a sensethat I had been touchedby life partfrommy maginationof it e.g. I lostthiseye. But I'd survivedt. I'd come

to an integrityespitethat justas a personwho mighthave lostfingersrealized that yes he could makearticulate life despite

that physical oss ofa leg or some partof hisbodythat would be

a usual fact inotherpeople deafor blind thathe hadsurvived. Well thatsurvival s so heady for while even insome

meager nstance s the loss ofone eye which s not that functional

a problem it's nota problembut a function rather that

54








gavemethesenseof not being apartfromphysical change because again theeye gavemethe informationhat yes of course wechange. Buttheplace of thatchange was paradoxicallyveryhardtogetto. And I would characteristicallygive tno thought. I

mean I would stayup all night ifthat was the impulse or drink llnight ifthat was the impulse. And I recognized oo thatyou can'ttake care ofa force hatain't there. Laughing) You can't drive

more lowly to savegas you don't have nthe car. You knowI mean it'sa physical imit. It's likeOlson's "limits rewhatanyof

us are insideof."...

SPANOS: Right. Yes and those limits or awarenessofthemgenerate uthenticpossibilities projective onsciousness...

CREELEY: So that what I'm fascinatedby isnotsome patientrecognition let'ssay not some recognitionhatwillbe necessarilypatient. But I'm fascinated o know howcan you livean oldlife. You obviouslycould livea youngone. You could livea middle

agedone. How could you livean old one? Ahd'therefore I'mreally I'm very nterestedn not howdo you do it likea how to

kit but reading forexample Theodora Kroeber aproposofthefact that she's married o a man I think 40 yearsyounger han

herself. And isthisa kindofgrotesque idealizationof herself? Ireallydidn't think o. I think he's saying thathumans ive ndiversepatterns. And inso far as there is mutual bond inthat

situation other maginationsf it mayor maynot be thecase. Iknowthat whenPenelopeand I married whenwe first lived

together she's 25 yearsyounger hanmyself and I thought"God that'swhatmyfriends lways insomeways toldme" notapropos of myself but theirdismay when a man or a womanmar

ried omeonewho seemed so disparate inrelation o themselves.And I wondered therefore was I doing simply hat? Was I simply ry

ing o be younger bymarryingomeoneyounger? And I recognizedparadoxically hat themarriage let mebe older letme be not

"older" but let me be old as I am inage let me bemyagerather han being na situationwhere felt was growing ld and

someone was usingmeas a measure oftheirgetting ld. That is "ifyou'regetting ld so must be getting ld." (Laughing) That's a

hardtrip. I don't think 'm avoiding hat. But one thing ifage isnotabhorrent o someoneyounger itcertainly snototherwise n

teresting.

SPANOS: Of course. Well that poem "After" one ofthetwoyou sentme alongwitha letter from pain inthespring

expresses hiswholethingveryvery beautifully nd movingly

55








this etting e visavis he inexorabledynamics f time whichHeideggerwould say isa letting eingbe:

I'll notwrite gain

things youngmanthinks,notthe wordsofthatfeeling.

There s no worldexceptfelt,noone therebutmustbe herealso.

Ifthattime wasechoing, vindicationapparent, ffleshand bone coincided-

let thebody be.See facesfloatoverthe horizon ettheday end.

CREELEY: Andalso I find n getting lder something thatI'd alwaysbeen rather hary bout. That is I'd insistupon trust

ing hings but the factual ability to trust hings inme was veryvery limited. I tended inPound'sphrase to "overprepare he

event." I wanted to coverall possible bets. I wasn't hesitantlet'ssay intaking hancesapropos myown provision you

know whethermoney or but I mean I would take forex

ample mywholefamily o Guatemala nothaving clue truly as

to whatwe might indthere whichwas kindofstupid. But itwasn'tthat I was fearful fgettingntosomething couldn'tgetout of because

I so frequently id. Itwas notaltogether appy but itwastaking areofsomething but it was tryingo thinkof all it

might have as a demandtoo abstractly. Thatgotto be exhaust

ing nd frustratingbecause a) I could never ccomplish t and

b) itwas sucha distraction rom hereal thing hatwas happeningthat I oftencouldn'tevenrecognize t was happening. I'd be waiting

to see whether thisor that plan was enclosing t or dealingwith

it. Mywife Bobbie used to say that we'd go throughcustoms a very imple nstance and I'd be so tryingo pre

pareto deal withcustoms that whentheydidn'task me whatwas inthebag I'd say "Don't youwantto knowwhat'sin thisbag?" (Laughter)

Because I'd so rehearsedwhattheywould probablywant to know

whichwas hardlyprotectingmyself. We sure had to open a lotofbags.

56








SPANOS: Again what's involved I think isthat Care.But I've usedthisotherword of Heidegger's ina couple ofletters o you: Gelassenheit letting e or letting eingbe.

It's a kind of recognition that to be human is to be gene

rous inthefaceof things. The rich tymology f thiswordtoois aproposto oursubject ..

CREELEY: I remember uncan inthat beautiful poem of his wherehe says "Take care bythe throat nd throttlet." Or I remember Ram6nSender years go saying o me "All you youngmen

so care foryourcares." In effect hewas saying "It's as thoughit'stheonly proposalofyoursignificancer seriousness hatyou think

ispossible. Your poems reek ofdespair nd burdens."Or say

songs ike "He's Not Heavy He's MyBrother" thatkindof60's senseofcaring. I'd loveto think thatcare could care etymologically is it"sorrow" does ithavethatsenseofburden?I don't know. I was talking o a friend who wrote a bright

a usefully elaxed andhuman discussionof Bill Merwin'spoemsand she speaks as one would characteristicallybout hispoemsofthe movefrom childhood'sintegrity to the dispersal

experienced then inthe world and all thewayshe tracks t andstates t. And of course one would love to stay nthatintegrity

ofthe child no matterwhether ne likedthepersons thereornot.Therewould be that ntegrityonetheless. Ifyou hatedyourfather

you could hate himeveryday. Therehe was. Andthenyou getout inthestreet and people are morevarious and maynotcare whetheryou hate them or not. Theywalkon by. So thatmovement o notthe larger but that other world thatdoesn'tyieldto linear patterns that ustkeepshappening whetheryou misstheboat or not theboat that sgone just likethe "world does notwaitforflowers" as Olson puts t. I've really oundthatworld

moreand more nteresting. I'm bored for xample as inSpain

whenI hit old time sad corrupted patterns of people.Theyare reallybleak to see. You know people forkingvertheirmoney for sleazykindsofclothing that have a "Parisian"style or buying unkfood because itwas inan American cornflakespackage. And I hated their uspicion and their tightness in this ittle orrupted own. But back inthe hills bitinno sentimental ense thewhole ease and generosity fpeople seemedto return. Theysaid hello for xample therewasn'tsomeawful

senseof "Here's a stranger whatcan I getout of him? When s hegoingto biteme?" Muchmore

opento theworld. Aswith

Basil I love Basil for whenwe'd go about in Northern ngland we'd go intoa pub orsomething I'd think "He isat homeintheworld." He sitsdown ina chair it isn'tthathe wantsto

57








bring verybodyntohisconversation orwantsto dominatethe room.He's utterly t home. And if he has a question hecan ask itwith

out confusion and he can hear what'ssaid to himwithout onfusion.It was terrific. I thought ifat 77 I havethat yeah

if feelas at home intheworldas he does despitethefact as hehas I've just lost my home ...

SPANOS: Yeah that of course isthe situation f anysensitiveman nthe world and I think one of the central contexts of

the modern r contemporary oet. How do you achievean athomenessinthe contextofbeing notathome which s you know basic

to the humanexperience. Heidegger's erm of course is Unheimlichkeit being ntherealmof theuncanny ..

CREELEY: Yeah (Laughing).

SPANOS: ... or etymologically thenotathome which of courseisthe realmof occasion. Howdoes one achieveathomeness inthis

world inwhichthecenter presence as Derridaputs it isabsent? Well again you know these latestpoems thepoemsyou sentme convey ..

CREELEY: Ihope they

do...

SPANOS: ... a sense of some sort of quest for this inawaythat's lostcertainties a much more yrical a much more

I'm almosttempted o say sentimental but I use it inthe bestsense of the word a much more yrical onality bout thesepoemsthanthe earlier hings. There s theedge. Buttheedge is softer.And although t cuts it's characterized yan uncertainty..

CREELEY: ... that's comfortable ...

SPANOS: . . Well I didn'twant to saycomfortable. It's notthat ..

CREELEY: Well I mean it isn'tmorepatient but it's moreI think t'sthat etting e inthatpoem I sentyou. That's a goodpoemforme. It's likesomething s simpleas "let ithappen"thatkindof almost oking sense of let thegood timesroll or

let what'sgoing o be be and don't be patient or passive

or stoical. I find toicism a bore ustthat it would value nothing but its own patience ...

SPANOS: You willprobably resist what I'm going o say but

58








I still hink t's there. You say "let what'sgoingto be be."But there's omething inthatemphasison be which opensup into a muchdeeper a muchprofounder sense of being than

simply ettingthappen. I'm not sureyou'd wantto subscribe o

this. But by lettingtbe as I suggested arlier you'reletting eingbe. Inotherwords thesubjectmatter f a lot of thesepoems

pertains o being to being intheHeideggerianense that s intheontological ense although you know this s not a philosophi

cal poetry. Nevertheless ifyouhear this language rather hansee it as critics oo oftendo whentheyreadyour poetry maybeI'm imposing n it myown interestnHeidegger but I really thinkwhenI hear it I hearsomething ew I don't mean nthesenseof de

velopment a deeperunderstanding ofsomething hatgoesback

to whenyou first used thatword "occasion": "the poem isthemeasure of its occasion." You've always inyour poetry Bobhad fundamentally thedeeper and profounder sense of thequestion "Whatdoes being mean?Whatdoes itmean tobe?"And this snotsimply matter f content ofsubjectmatter.It is in therhythmsfyour ine. t's in your voice ...

CREELEY: I hear...

SPANOS: ... You're articulating you'reattemptingyou'reexploringyou'redis closing being. And I think you come closestto bring

ing tnear I mean makingtexplicit without naming tinthesepoems. In so manyofthem it seemsto me this s what'sreally

happening. And I'll also saythis I think t is because you havebecome conscious ina waythatyou haveneverbeenbefore of thebreaking fthe instrument..

CREELEY: I hear...

SPANOS: . .. ofthe bodygoing. I gotthis ense also whenyou readat Binghamtonast December even inyourcasual comments. omuchofwhatyou readand talkedaboutwas almostunconsciouslyreleasedby yourawarenessof growing ld.

CREELEY: Yeah I hear. I think timpossiblenot to be notpreoccupied but certainly houghtful. One evening onceinvisiting lson itmusthavebeen inthe 60's we'd been up allnight alking. We then walked downto thediner alongthe

harbor here thathereallyenjoyed

where oftentimes thepeople goingout to fish would come into getsome coffee and the

old timerswouldtend to be there lso sort ofwatching hefishermangetittogether hemselves it was a very implediner. And

59








we weresitting here talking bout thisand that and I suddenlyrealized thathewas ina very ntensive stateoffeelingand thatthereweretears literally comingdown hisface. And

I reachedoverand said "What's thematter Charles?" And hesaid "It's justimpossible for me to" notto recognizeoracknowledge because that was tacitlywhathewas doing but

he said "that the mountain can diminish and that the seacan dryup? I can't I cannot think t. I'm baulked and brokenbythat that this force is tacitlydiminishing. It's justhorrifyingo me.Threatening very deeply threatening." Then

moments ater he wasgoneto Englandor Germany orthat ecturefor heLiterarisches olloquium that would date itprettymuch

1966 I think. And then I saw himhappily after hat time.

It didn'trecur. But that was the fearof aging nddying notso much the fearofdeath but the fearofaging whenthepower

diminishes. In hiscontext that was really thiswas whathehad beengivenas a power thisalmost problem fperson with

this mmense ize and physical strength..

SPANOS: Yes of course ..

CREELEY: . . . and to feel t diminishing and shifting and changing

inhisbody was just displacing beyondall else. Whenhewasactuallydying whichwas certainly otsimple justthat the cancerwas sucha tricky hing o locate as to where ts sourcewas

thatwas a transformingxperience.But paradoxically inthat actual situationofdying rather haracteristicallyhewas so absorbedbythe

activity that he didn't really seemingly avemuch eitherfear or even infactual ense dismay. I speak quickly. I spent

parts of say two or threehourstwo afternoonswith him.Someone as HarveyBrownwould havea more articulate senseof all thatmay havehappened. Buthewas delighted o say for n

stance "You know the fundaments justas rooted as the firmament." (Laughter) He said "... my God in times of thinking..."Hispointwas that n timesofthinking ou can actuallybe almost

drawn o believethat thefirmament is where tall goes. But

byGod theass is thefundaments ustas mucheternal.

SPANOS: Tremendous. Jesus that'stremendous.

CREELEY: Yeah ittakes careof itself.

SPANOS: That putsa hell of a lotmore meaning nto that linefrom Sunday Morning" whichWallace Stevens himself learnedlateron the realmeaning f: "Death is the mother fbeauty."

60








That's a much richer and moresignificant ayofputting urmortality ourearthliness than Stevens' n thatearlypoem ...

CREELEY: Yeah I hear...

SPANOS: Bob I thinkwe'vecome back or come around so to speakto theoriginal ssue which sworthrestating repeating s really

a betterwayof puttingt for he light hat ourconversationmayhave shed on it I mean theAmerican radition and yourrelationship as poet to it. Clearly he received the academic versionofthetradition the one handed down to us bytheNew

Critics is moreor lessalien to yoursense of it. I've alreadysaid thatthe NewCriticism as I see it givesprivilegedtatusto Form

or Beingwith capital letter overtemporality or process beingwith small etter. Inotherwords itprefers ina kindofbasicway a poetry inwhichclosure s ontologically rior o openness

or dis closure. Indoingthat it seemsto me itopts for tradition inwhichAmerica s subsumedunderEurope. And inthisunderstandingf thetradition it is ofcourse Donne and Her

bert and Crashaw and Marvell and inAmerica EdwardTayloretc. at least as they'reunderstoodbytheNew Critics rather

than say Whitman whoconstitute ts source. What 'm say

ing isthatthereceived radition locatesitsground ntheMetaphysical poets the poetswho perceivemeta ta physikaand to deconstruct ne ofCleanth Brooks'sfavorite erms are "in clusive"intheir mpulse. Fromthis privileged ointofview poets

likeWhitman poetswhoperceivephenomenologically and arethusdis closivepoets aremarginal ec centric so to speak.

So the realpoets thepoetswho extend thetradition are poetslikeEliot and Auden and Frost and Tate and Ransomcenteredpoets whobeginthepoem from n end from e

ceivedassumptions about theexperience tencounters and thus

shapes. So that poets likeWilliams and Pound thePound oftheCantos and Olson and eventhe laterStevens and Ithink RobertCreeley poetswho return to thethings hem

selves who likeWilliams invent" insistentlyxplore inthedispersed world thedivided the occasional world in

searchofa new or rather a renewed measure are outside thetradition outside the inclusive ircle outside tsbounding ine

itsboundary. But ofcourse that's whereyou haveto beand insist n being. Let meread thatgreatpassage from

Book II of Paterson:

Without nvention othingswellspaced,unless hemindchange,unless

61








thestars renewmeasured, ccordingto theirrelative ositions, helinewill notchange, henecessitywillnot matriculate: nlessthere s

a newmind herecannotbe a newline, he old willgo onrepeatingtselfwithrecurringdeadliness: without nventionnothingiesunder hewitch-hazelbush,the alder does notgrowfrom mongthe hummocksmargininghe allbutspentchannelof the old swale,thesmallfoot-prints

ofthemice under heoverhangingtufts fthebunch-grass ill notappear: without nvention he linewillnever gaintakeon itsancientdivisionswhen theword, suppleword,lived nit,crumblednow to chalk.

Anyway that'ssomething liketheway I'd differentiate the received idea of the American radition from yourunderstandingf

it.How would you?

CREELEY: What eems to characterizet most ntensively as a distinctart is itsexperimental ature bywhich mean thefact

that t'san intensive predominantly omantic art. I was think

ingof Donald Sutherland's waysofqualifyingRomanticism andClassicism. It seemsto be insistently preoccupied withbe

coming and with time and with change those various conditions as opposed to space or Beingor I

think ..

SPANOS: ... stasis...

CREELEY: ... stasis. It's almost thedilemmathat Americanshave attempted o convert space intotime. I can recall

for xample when storiesusedto be printed n I guess twas LibertyMagazine or Collier's withthe reading imesattached whichgavecuriously a much more intensive ense of substance say than

ifyou said therewas so muchphysical space of pages.

But moreto the point a remark fGarySnyder's apropos thatthe initial enseof space inthiscountry that could be thoughtofas something initiating and used as measure f person after t's

recognized thatthere s no longer a "new frontier" or pos

62








sibility fthat resource thus to be used as a measure ftheperson.It's as thoughwe then turn speed into thatpossibility. You

accelerate thuschangetheexperience tc. We turn pace intotimeintospeed. But I suppose what I feelmost nsistentlynthe

art isthe move out from the particularities of say beinga humanperson in some primary sense to the ima

gination of the all else as having heprimaryignificance.I mean it'sas though notonlyinpoetry and itspreoccupationsbutequally inall terms f Americanife hatI'm awareof there'sconstant emphasis upongetting omewhere. The "future" forex

ample isthecrucial term as against erms f pastor presentthe future stheabsolute point or center. It's ourselvesbe

coming there.

SPANOS: I would call this astemphasis ego centric thusrelatingOlson and Heidegger gain. I would also call thisversion f futu

ral expectations a teleologicalunderstandingf time.

CREELEY: And I can well understand how the abstraction ofbody was so simply accomplished. That is thebody became paradoxically material lso. As though the mind, hat workeron whatis" has other spectsof information I think thanpos

sibly thoseCharles ntended. The mindbegins

to be some kind ofsmelting lant for heconversion fmaterial whichain't so

happy. I knowthat Olson thought f itas "working" n somethingto gain itsvirtue or itsactual orto recognize tsactual nature.But it'sawfully lose as an image to thesenseofsomething

chomping verythingp and turningt into a material fa verydifferent order. But I yeah thepeople who are extra

ordinarilynterestingo me are really the inventors nottheinventorsnPound's sensenecessarily but the people forwhomit

is some insistentnitiatingxperience. I love it ifyou read

it inVaughan like "I saweternity heothernight .." I tendtohear nthat as an American some incredible pening senseof

physical visionary eality. The writers anyhow that Itheyaren't really rucialto me until you getto Whitman whomI cameto ratherate. I'm fascinatedby EmilyDickinson the interior spacesofherpoems arefascinatingo me. And thefactualpowerof the language o statefeelings is ust I think great.

I didn'tcome to Wordsworth ntil really nmiddle ge andthenrecognized a veryparallelpowerin making rticulate feel

ings that areextraordinarily uman notthat"I'm sorry orthisperson" butsensesofhow physically ne's intheworld. Extraordinary. I think that theAmericanhabit sto thinkof life s atesting of capacity a measuring gainst omething almosta

63








pitting f oneself gainst he phenomenality ofall else so thatparadoxically notparadoxically butexpectedly there re

moments fextraordinaryxhaustion and blowout whichsometimes retranscendedmagnificently like Williamsn Patterson. I

would agreewithOlson again that PatersonV is the interestingbook inthatcycle thatthe enclosure ttempted nthe first ourbooks is really distraction. It keeps distorting thepattern ofthepoem formyreading t least. It keepstakingyou into decisions

rather haninto or there retwoverydistinctkindsofwritinggoingon one wanting o make theform as a decision the otherwanting o discover heform as a function f possibility of some

thing hatcan happen actually as opposed to somethinghat houldhappen. And I find he poem to mymind of most interest

inthatwhole time s really "The Desert Music" whichI think sterrific. It's a greatpoem

Nowthe musicvolleys hrough s ina lonelymoment hear t. Now itis allabout me.The dance The verbdetaches tself

seeking o becomearticulate.

I wonder if the Americanhabit of beingyoung is a necessary

factor f person and ofbeing nnocent you know insome

curious sense of pristine condition nd therefore ossibility.Thatto me is a very deep partof ourculture ..

SPANOS: How does thatreconcilewith the notionof occasionin thesense of being fallen? I know ..

CREELEY: Well you see again I characteristicallyhought fthatsunrise Laughing). No irony I just "It came to pass"is the sense I feel inthe word"occasion." "It was this way."

"Whatwas theoccasion foryour doingthat?" "Well let'ssee." "What were the .. ." It's not only the circumstances what was

around thecontext let'ssay. Whatwas in hand whatwas

seeminglyhecase. In otherrespects whatwas . . "Then as I rememberthereweretwo carshere and somebodywas standing here."

Butthe occasion is whatfactually as you say falls what comes to

pass. And that's to me theonly substantial uthoritynthe wholeevent iswhathappened. So I love thatsenseI used to fearwritingccasional poems until probably gotmuch

more relaxedabout whatafter ll an occasionmight e. I thought "Idon't want to writepoemscelebrating hepresent or evenparticularlove forpersons as some didacticsenseofnecessity somethinghave to do."

64








SPANOS: It'struethat...

CREELEY: Bytheway I don't justto continue biton thatI don't really like the Adamic man theory you know...

SPANOS: Well thiswaswhatI was getting t whenI ...

CREELEY: ... I don't feel comfortablewiththatat all. It seemstome yeah itreally eems to mereading lot intothe record thatain't there. It's like a "fauxnaif" premise to me as thoughthe Europeanwas reborn ntheNew World. I heard incon

trast thesimple tatistics like Columbus' proposalto importthe Indiansof thiscountry intothe Old World as slaves. I justdon't

believe t itwas some otherway. I mean you getsplashesin Boone or in say Freneau'swriting or Crevecoeur's littletastes in Bartram who I think sthegreatwriter fthat extra

ordinary reshness at times. But I don't think therewas

any Adamic trip goingon ofanyrealdimension. I think twas far more the habits of Europe tryingo extend to acclimatize thiscountry to itsown interests and purposes. There

justneverhas beenanythinglse. I thinkmuchmore nterestingsOlson's point that"we are the last first eople."

SPANOS: Yes I agree...

CREELEY: Nowthat's rather ifferent. We'rethe last

groupof humanbeings to arrive ina new place. So therefore our informingf it or ourmaking a form f it has

had potential. Butas Williams laments n"Asphodel" howsoon we lostthat"flowerybloom" how soon it was factuallyost

It was a flower

uponwhichAprilhad descendedfrom heskiesHow bitter

a disappointmentInall,

this ed mainlyto the deaths I havesuffered.

Fortherehad been kindledmore minds

thanthat of thediscoverersand setdancingto a measure,

a newmeasureSoon lost.

65








I think here's kindof relating o Europeansorequallya relation osay Asianssuchas I've briefly nown hem. There can be an

incrediblygeless wisdom let'ssay seemingly inthesocial habitsofthe Chinese even someJapanese but there'san old

youngness inAmericans that I think sverydistinct.

SPANOS: Wouldyou putOlson's pointthisway or could I put itthisway? That the Europeans are fundamentallymetaphysicalwhereas he Americans Americanpoets are attempting by

theverynatureof their xperience to repeat to return o originswithout t the same time denying themetaphysicalhing.

Again ...

CREELEY: I think hey nclude t but I think heyfeel ..

SPANOS: . . . "Form isnevermorethan an extensionof content." TheEuropean is conceivesofform as ontologicallyprior o "con

tent." The American Whitman say orWilliams or Olson orCreeley does notdenyform. But "content" isontologicallypriorto form. So that theAmerican maginationontainsboththe old and

the new simultaneously which swhat Olson seemsto be saying there.

CREELEY: Yeah it'salso inboth itshappy butequally in its destructivespects completely unembarrassed y its appetites.

It doesn't havea form that encloses thecontent oftheprevious thatis inmanymanyways our social habits andourwaysof seeingpeople we havesucha general chema orseemingly as witness ur use of language npoetry. Ourdiction so to speak comes from ucha welter of habitsof professional and intellectual and social uses noneofwhichseem to

be a confusion. Wesimplyuse whatwe want to use and don't really

thinkmore about itthan that whereas nthe European pattern youcan have suchanomalies as GunterGrass committed ntirely o thesocialist cause particularlyheworking lass literally writingna

German hatnone of them can understand orthedistinctions ofcourse betweendemoticGreek and literaryGreek whichagain

prohibits let'ssay writers f real social commitment frombeingunderstoodbythe people to whomtheirwork saddressed. Thishap

pensin England too. I mean Orwell's or I was going o sayShelley's moving ttempts o write fortheworking lass to make

tracts and hoping hattheywould be put in withTom Paine's etc.It's characteristichat t'sTom Painewho they'rereading. It isn'tbecause he speaks moreplainly but because the habit of his address

is moreabrupt immediate and common.

66








SPANOS: Yeah that's interesting though shouldpointout bytheway that therevolution f the word has beentakingplace inGreece for generationnow Palamas Seferis and above all

Yannis Ritsos...

CREELEY: I think Americahas I waswatching his televisionshowapropos the Santa Fe Opera. Wespend partof theyear

inNewMexico frequently and know someofthecircumstancesftheOpera and some not happily well of the people in

volved. But it'sa rather respectable ocial enclave of wealthyand/or personsretired witha kindof "leisureland"feeling o it.

AndtheOpera is their child ortheir pleasure. It's a verygood facility. But what's interesting is inthis TV show

of it theywerespeaking ftrying o bring he Indian children n to seetheopera. Theydid and they seemed to likeitO.K. and stufflikethat. But that kind of differentiation feelsveryfaintinthiscountry. What 'm tryingo say isthat I would notgo although I might well be biasedtoo I wouldnotgo to those peopleinSante Fe forany information concerning pera or moreparti

cularly art of thesituation fart because I heard one saying thedirector JohnCrosby saying you know thatSanta

Fe and NewMexico was a very hospitableclimate forthearts that thearts werehighly egarded. And I can thinkofno placethat'smore hostilely ejecting f itsartists inactualfact. Whentheywere thereworking I don't remembernybody leaping to give

Diebenkorn nyextraordinary eception and NormanMacleod was permitted o become an alcoholic or Ed Dorn workedfor meager

pittance nthe library. It isn'tthattheyweren'trecognized butevenwhen say someone ofactual repute to theirmind

as Berio whentheysaid "You know thisperson skindof interesting" therewas stillno game. What 'm tryingo say there sonlya social habittowardsthearts a veryfaint articulateness. They

reallywanted a party theydidn't particularly antmorethanthat.Theywanted a party hattheycould dominate. But what I'm

tryingo say isthat nthiscountry thefact that we do havea commonimagination ofdemocracy whether r not we havethe

practical nstance means that we thatI know I as a poet feelI can speak and/orwrite inthenatureofmyown social

habits and discover an audience or a company for hatspeech. And I would probablyfeelthatthat is a distinctAmeri

can tradition notso much the belief n people as the experienceof

peopleina

verydiverse

and you know unstructuredand ...

SPANOS: ... dispersed ...

67








CREELEY: ... dispersed ...

SPANOS: ...society.

CREELEY: The dilemma of course is we don't reallyknowhow very significantly tobe anywhere. It isn'tthat our citiesgrowwithout structure r order as opposed let'ssay to Paris

but that nthecontemporary moment it'shardto imaginehowotherwise citywouldgrow if t is to grow t all. E.g. ifyou goto Hong Kong or particularlyo Singapore and see what'snowbeingdone with heold Chinesequarter which s the incrementalEuropean let'ssay equivalent forgett. It's ust like high

rises and condominiums. t's veryAmerican. Well they'llsay "You

did itto us." Well to hellwe did itto you. You didn'thavetoeatwhat was there to be eaten ifyou had otherchoices whichyoupretty bviouslydid. I think ur naive dependence upon

equality we sayan equalityofeducation notmeaningequal possibility of instruction again I want to say we

want to say everybody shallbe able to go to Harvard. We ignorethefact as to howappropriate hat would be forevery

body. So we paydues on that. Wepresume hat all people have theright o speak equally forgettinghat some maybe you know

incapableof saying nythinghat's of interestnthisor thatspecific ontext. Butwe say "Let themspeak let them peak." Wethereforehave a great onfusion nthearts let'ssay which spartofthe tradition inso far s ...

SPANOS: Is thatgood?

CREELEY: It'sgood becauseyou can't nail it down.

SPANOS: O.K. I likethat so un-NewCritical quationof

confusion nd tradition. That's deconstructing ina way thatopens up richpossibilities. t's also letting e ...

CREELEY: Likeone time n a conversationwith AllenGinsbergI was going to go to give lecture n EdgarAllan Poe at theSorbonne no less and I'd let itgo up till the last minute and Ithought I'd askmyvarious olleaguesand friends whattheywouldthink particularlyignificantbout Poe and I remember skingAllen amongothers and he said "Well what'slovely bout

Poe he's so decisively n instance f after ll thegreat traditionofthepoet inthiscountry. The poet in thiscountry s almost withoutexception a manifest eccentric ifnota literalnut." Thebehaviorpatterns and the conduct of thepoet as person inthis

68








country isa very ccentric phenomenon fbeing e.g. EzraPound or Whitman or again Poe or EdwinArlingtonRobinson almostall ofthoseone thinks f with nstant and im

mediate ffection arethese verykindofcranky eccentric personsEmilyDickinson. Again I thinkmyresentment f Frost is

thathe worked o be that. He was a phony ..

SPANOS: That'sgood. He wasn't an original an ec centric ..

CREELEY: I wouldsay if were asked to respect ithermaninvirtue f howtheyseem to be persons n theworld I think hat

Colonel Sanders s farmore authentic s humanbeing and I thinkhis nformationspossiblybetter or certainly I think Colonel

Sanders' fried hickens remorereal than are many of RobertFrost'spoems. I mean RobertFrostmakes thepoem as thepresentColonel Sanders' franchisemakeschickens. Laughter)Theymakethem becausetheyknowthey're upposedto look a certainway and have a certainuse ofthings to feel ike thereal old timerswould. And Frostwon't reallyrocktheboat ifhe feels t'sreallygoingto botheryou. I was reading t one point nthisclass I

thought f a poetwho againis inthistradition an extraordinary manifest eccentric: RobinsonJeffers. Ifyou take Jeffers' oems and

suddenlyhinkof them na context with Frost's take Frost's

proposednaturepoems forexample and suddenlyput RobinsonJeffers'gainst hem. He justblows them way.

SPANOS: Sure.

CREELEY: It isn'tthathe's a betterpoet. It's ustthathe is a poet.Frost is a versifier..

SPANOS: .. .which means of course as you've been implying he

writes rom he end rather han from hebeginning or betterperhaps dis interestedly care lessly so to speak rather haninterestedly inter sse from nthemidst fthings.

CREELEY: You knowthey'remaking hisgoddamnedhouse in FranconiaNewHampshire a kindof national hrine...

SPANOS: Yeah I've heardabout that. I'm fromNew Hampshireand keep intouch.

CREELEY: Well then you know can you think f thepeopleinthatstate they'vehadeverythinglse there likeski lodges ..

69








SPANOS: Oh Jesus /Iknow... My...

CREELEY: ... and nowthey'regoing o have more. I don't knowhowyou feelabout Frost'spoems but I think theytakethings

love and do little tripson them.

SPANOS: I've alwaysfelt he sameway maybenot so strongly aboutFrost'spoems ever incemy undergraduate ears tWesleyan whereheand Sandburg werefrequent isitors weredeities andtheir rackerbarrelposes charmed herich NewJersey suburbanitestudentbody. I had something o do bytheway thoughit wasn'teasy justa yearand a half go withgetting im offthegoddamned M.A. reading ist Laughter) and gettingOlson

and you knowhowtight hosereading ists re getting lsonand WallaceStevens the late Wallace Stevens on it in poetryand Beckett nd Pynchon nfiction.

CREELEY: That'sgreat ..

SPANOS: But I had it was painful tryingo get Frost off.I finally I don't think persuaded nybody thatthese weregood

writers or thatFrostwasn't but I did finally makethe

pointthat thispostmodernwriting reallyexisted andhad to be

represented inany graduate istpresumingo reflect he real situationof letters inAmerica.

CREELEY: One time visiting llen in CherryValley heshowedme an anthology then contemporary thathisfatherhad givenhim ingrammarchool or something ikethat. And itwas likea justoverthe edgeof the 19thcenturyntothe 20th.So thatRobinson Jeffers as in there itseemsto meBrowningwas

in there and so on. Itwas like thepoetsof England nd Ameri

ca. And Frost was there as some kindof almost a late 19thcentury Edwardianpoet. And Allen not knowing t all then whoFrost was had pencilled littlemoustacheon himand written nderneath "Hitler." (Laughter) The onlytimeI was everthrown ut ofa class inschool and I hadno perception f what I was doing

otherwise infact the teacher was an extraordinarily pleasantman a verydear teacher nmy estimation itwas an Englishclass I guess I was a junior nhigh chool and wewerenow reading

modernpoetry. WewerereadingEliot and you know the

typical poetrywe would have

read.Andwe came

uponFrost

and those "two roads" "Two roadsdivergedna yellowwood"and I began to sortof glibly but nonetheless ffectively to

parodythem to say "Well I don't understandwhyhe's saying

70








that if this willhe everknow what the other road ledto?Why she so smugabout it?" I was really rritated ythispatness.

And theteacher who wasdoinghis ob likeanyof us wasreally mpatient hat I was getting he whole class laughing and nobody

was paying ttention o the poem. So finallyhe askedme to leave.Andthen aterhe said "Come around and see me tonight." And so

intheprocessofdiscipline he said "You know I can understandwhatyou feelabout Frost but I don't agreeto yourwantingto imposeiton all theother members ftheclass (Laughter). Simplyrespect hatsomeonemightnotagreewithyou aproposof RobertFrost and letthem have their chance. What/thinkofFrost is really mmaterial but I certainly on't thinkyourattitudetowardFrost should dominatethe entire lassperiod whenwe'resup

posedlystudying iswork." He's theonly person hateverexcitedmelikethat reallymademe gleefully ngry and wanting o ...

SPANOS: You weredeconstructing the expectations nthatclassroom.You're a naturaldeconstructor Bob.

CREELEY: Yeah I was inthosedays. Well for nstanceI rememberwe wereput to memorizing poemwhichwe really iked

that senseof memorizing poemofyourown interest and thenyou come to classand write tout. And so I did and theteacherthencalled me inafterwards handed thepaperback. I'd gotthe

whole first line wrong ly. And he said "How inthename of heavens could you do that?" He said "You werewritinghatpoemof EmilyDickinson's and her ine is 'Inebriateofair am I.' That's kindof simple ifyou remember he restofthepoem.

You've got 'I am an inebriate fair' " (Laughter) ..

SPANOS: Great That's great...

CREELEY: ... "thatthing oesn't haveany rhythm or anythingo it."But I couldn'tsay "Inebriateof air am I." Itsounded silly. I

was goingto straightentout forher.

SPANOS: That's tremendous Laughter). So that mpulseofthevoiceto begin from hebeginning inotherwords well I

don't knowif t's "in otherwords" ...

CREELEY: .. . back to the tradition?

SPANOS: Yeah. What wanted to say isthat inotherwordsI'm notsure it's inotherwords "in theAmericangrain" is

means that there s no Americangrain.

71








CREELEY: Well I suppose as withOlson or Melville ranyof thewriters Poundverymuch readingPound's earlyPatria Mia the imaginationhere Whitman I suppose has

themost expansive view I findmyself oth really

drawn to Thoreau let'ssay but also very rritated ithhim.Emerson of course I keepbeingmovedbythe journals of butthepoems really basically leave me cold. It's I supposethe tradition sthat tryingo not humanize buttrying o thinkof human possibility inthisextraordinarily curiouscountry.I was thinkingf Penelopeoff to Idaho. She mustdrive wo three

fourdays possibly before hegetsthere. She was first ere comingfrom his slandculture NewZealand although hehad beentoEurope etc. etc. Sheflew nto Buffalo s ithappens and then we

starteddrivingo NewMexico. It was just phenomenal oher. She'd never eena land mass ikethisbefore nd people continuouslyspeaking American. And we stillhad a thousandmiles o go if weweregoing o theWest oast. It's a I find ta very diversecountry. I meanbythat I don't think themelting ot sym

bol isat all useful or inanysenseadequate.

SPANOS: No the notionof thealchemicalpot out of which thequintessence merges the center the ogos theword thewordthatre collects thefragmented One after the fall into

time and reestablishes transformshe iron into thegoldenage thatwon't do as you'vesaid before to describeAmerica.

Again dispersal...

CREELEY: ... dispersal ...

SPANOS: .. .that's the grain. It's dispersal. I like and of

course itseems to me that Williams inPatersonthat'swhat thatwholepoem is about.

CREELEY: Yeah ...

SPANOS: Dispersaland ofcourse descent.

CREELEY: "The descentbeckons" ...

SPANOS: ... "The descentbeckons." The ascentbeckoned pasttense the descent beckons present ense.

CREELEY: "Memory" ...

SPANOS: So fall dispersal infinite eferral ofthat ultimate

72








and final thing...

The descentbeckonsas the ascentbeckoned.

Memory s a kindofaccomplishment,

a sort of renewaleven

an initiation,incethespaces itopensare newplacesinhabitedbyhordes

heretofore nrealized,of newkinds

sincetheirmovements

aretowardnewobjectives(eventhoughformerly heywereabandoned).

No defeat smadeup entirely f defeat- sincethe world topens isalwaysa place

formerlyunsuspected.Aworld ost,

a worldunsuspected,beckons to new

placesand no whitenesslost) isso white s thememoryofwhiteness

Olson too musthave had this nmind when he wrotethatgoddamned beautifulbook Call Me Ishmael because what is it thatAhab isgoing fter inhisobsessive his madpursuit of thewhitewhale? Ahab isgoing fter that one final thing or ratherno-thing you see...

CREELEY: Right right right...

SPANOS: ... inthecontext of course of a universe ofa nature fthings whichwillnotallow it you know because ...

CREELEY: I think and absolutely Bill I hear t as the he'smeasuring imself thefinal hing hat can declare hisevent nthe world.

73








Post-face

After our conversation,Robert Creeley and I agreed not totamper in any radical way with the tape, i.e., not to re-vise t fromthedistantvantage point of a re-view though,of course,we knew that themere transcriptionof the sound would constitute a coercion andfalsificationf the thing tself, tstruth).For wehad realized, think, hatthe essential meaning of our conversation lay in large part in the

talking - the interruptions, he turns, the back-tracking,he pauses,the sudden heuristic eaps of the speech process, i.e., the discover-inggeneratedand insisted on by the occasion. We wanted to maintaintheevent as event, as process. In Creeley's words, we wanted to let themeasure of its occasion be. To this end, as it were, we decided, not

withoutsome uncertainty, ot onlyto preserve he "disorderly" rderofthe whole,which I understood as something ike a verbalequivalentof aperiplus,and the syntacticaldisruptions r, better,maybe,the eruptionsthatreveal hemindheuristicallytwork play), but also - as well as printwould allow - the variablepauses or silences,the voids betweenwords-thatsignaldiscovering, r rather, he rhythm fdiscovering thesignlesssigns f languageunderstood s occasional.

That is,whatwe realized in the processof our conversationwasthatwe had leaped into the circle"whollyand primordially." mean that

the processof our conversation estroyed hat initial bstraction fmineabout Creeley's postmodernism r, rather,disclosed it,opened up otherpossibilities oncealed inside tsbounding ine.Not that we foundanswers.On the contrary,we discovered nd stirred eeper rootsof thequestions.That is, our arrival t the end - that last sentence- was clearlya newbeginning.

74








4 5 4?'s

**4

--

400

L 9

-iiii~iitiiiiiiiiiiI~iii

75








Documents

Talking With Robert Creeley