Selected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945–2005 Quotes

“What's inside,
what's the place
apart from
this one?”
― Robert Creeley, Selected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945–2005

“How dear
you are

to me, how love-
ly all your
body is, how

all these
senses do
commingle, so

that in your very
arms I still
can think of you.”
― Robert Creeley, Selected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945–2005

“To be in love is like going out-
side to see what kind of day
it is.”
― Robert Creeley, Selected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945–2005

“The century was well along

when I came in
and now that it's ending,
I realize it won't
be long.

But couldn't it all have been
a little nicer,
as my mother'd say. Did it
have to kill everything in sight,

Did right always have to be so wrong?”
― Robert Creeley, Selected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945–2005

“You’ve left a lot out
Being in doubt
you left
it out

Your mother
Aunt Bernice
in Nokomis
to the west

and south (?)
in trailer park
Dead now for years
as one says

You’ve left
them out
David
your son

Your friend
John
You’ve left
them out

You thought
you were writing
about
what you felt

You’ve left it out
Your love
your life
your home

your wife
You’ve
left her
out

No one is one
No one’s alone
No world’s that small
No life

You left it out”
― Robert Creeley, Selected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945–2005

“One knows that in the waters hereabouts, in a particular spring,
Ponce de Leon staggered in so as to live forever.
But poisoned with infection from a local’s arrow
and conned by the legend of eternal youth,
he’d led all his people into a bloody cul de sac
and ended himself being fed to alligators
ate him skin and bones, leaving no trace.

So it may be we all now look
for where the first of these old folks went down,
seeing his own face in the placid creek,
hearing the far off murmur of the surf,
feeling his body open in the dark,
the warmth of the air, the odor of the flowers,
the eternal maiden waiting soft in her bower.”
― Robert Creeley, Selected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945–2005

“I thought if I were broken enough
I would see the light
like at the end of a small tube, but approachable.”
― Robert Creeley, Selected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945–2005