Robert Creeley, 1926-2005

Sad, sad day. If there's a single poet who's had the biggest impact on my poetry (or at least on my thinking about poetry), it's Robert Creeley, and I know there are many others who would say the same. The unflinching focus and engagement of his early work played a big part in my decision to make a commitment to poetry in the first place, and each of his newer books surprised me with the depth of its resonance.

I didn't have much contact with him, but when I chatted with him a few years ago after a reading at U of T he invited me to visit him "down the road" (he was living in Buffalo at the time). I didn't, thinking that, judging by the readiness with which he extended the invitation, there must have been many others who had received a similar one and that therefore it would be too much of an invasion of his privacy and too great a demand on his time. Wrong logic, I now realize, where he's concerned. I wish I had gone. "Company" is a word Creeley used extremely frequently. Company seemed to be something he relished and something with which he was extremely generous.

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