30 March 2005
Bruce Jackson
Robert CreeleyMay 21, 1926-March 30,2005
Robert Creeley, one of the two or three most important American poets of the last half-century, died in his sleep at 7:15 a.m. on March 30, 2005, in a hospital in Odessa, Texas. He went there after he had fallen ill in Marfa, Texas, where the Lannan Foundation had sent him to think and write. Marfa is one of those places they have in mind when they say "It's in the middle of nowhere." The hospital in Odessa was three hours away. He'd been taken there the night before because he'd been having trouble breathing. Bob had emphysema for years, but recently it had gotten a great deal worse, so much so that he'd been on oxygen all the time. They'd seen a mass in one of his lungs in a recent xray and did a biopsy, but it came up negative. There was a more specific test that would have told them more about the mass, and that was the primary reason he went to Odessa, but he died before they got around to it. His wife Penelope was with him, as were their two children, Will and Hannah.
Bob Creeley was one of a small group of people who made the University at Buffalo English Department world famous in the 1960s and early 1970s, and it was that English Department which, in turn, helped make University at Buffalo world famous. People still talk about the UB English Department as if that incredible group of creative people were still here, though they're all dead or retired or gone elsewhere.
Bob's interests and connections radiated far beyond poetry. He was friends with many of the most important modern artists and he frequently worked with them on books and exhibition projects. He also friends with and a working partner of important jazz musicians. If I've ever known a true man of the arts, it was Bob Creeley.
He was also one of the great readers. He gave thousands of public readings, to any kind of audience. He gave one in Virginia two weeks before he died. His poems were for the eye and also for the ear. A few years ago when I expressed amazement at his very full performance schedule, he quoted one of his favorite lines from one of his favorite poets and friends, the physician William Carlos Williams: "They call me, and I go."
He and Penelope were our very dear friends, so as much as the world of letters and the arts is diminished by his death, our own world of human companionship is equally diminished. Rather than say anything more about him, I'd like to show you two of my favorite photographs of him. In the first he's with Will, who was then so young he was called Willie. I took it in the early 1980s, when they had a house in Myrtle Beach for a few months and Diane and I went down and we spent a week together, talking about things. The second is in Boulder, about the same time, with his good pal Ed Dorn.
TCopyright 2005 by Buffalo Report, Inc.
