Selected poems, 1945-2005

A true iconoclast, Creeley was one of the last defending stalwarts of outsider poets, from the Black Mountain School to the beats, the deep imagists, the language poets, and even the performance poets. Editor Friedlander has done a masterful job assembling the best of 50 years of poetry.  Particularity, commonality, language, and person: these are the principal terms of Robert Creeley's art, a sixty-year inquiry into the nature of experience, writes Friedlander in his comprehensive introduction, which includes reproductions of handwritten poetry drafts, original versions of typed poems, art, and family pictures. The poems, many of which smack of a William Carlos Williams' influence, are brief, emotionally charged, and lyrical, using ordinary language in short, breathy lines. Creeley's poetry comprises distilled revelation, with his voice and personal experience present throughout. This well-chosen selected collection is full of subtle, almost hesitant oppositional poems, rather than confessional narratives, adding up to a distinguished posthumous release that will keep Creeley's necessary poetry very much alive.--Eleveld, Mark Copyright 2008 Booklist