Creeley Robert - The selected letters of Robert Creeley

SIMPSON

IMPRINT IN HUMANITIES

The humanities endowment by Sharon Hanley Simpson and Barclay Simpson honors

MURIEL CARTER HANLEY

whose intellect and sensitivity have enriched the many lives that she has touched.

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Simpson Humanities Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation, which was established by a major gift from Barclay and Sharon Simpson.

The publisher also gratefully acknowledges the support of the Leslie Scalapino Memorial Fund for Poetry, which was established by generous contributions to the UC Press Foundation by Thomas J. White and the Leslie ScalapinoO Books Fund.

The publisher also gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Humanities Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation.

The Selected Letters

of Robert Creeley

Group, 1963: Jerry Heiserman (later Sufi Hassan), the car whose? Dan McCloud (later editor of Georgia Straight underground paper), Allen Ginsberg, Bobbie Louise Hawkins Creeley, Professor Warren Tallman our host, Robert Creeley above big Charles Olson. Seated below left, Thomas Jackrell (student poet who wrote about Campbell soup cans), Philip Whalen poet, and postmodern poetics editor Don Allenin front of Tallmans househed sent me ticket to return round world after year-and-half in India for Vancouver B.C. Canada university poetry conference, last days of July 1963 (Allen Ginsberg). Photo by Allen Ginsberg. Allen Ginsberg Estate.

The Selected Letters

of Robert Creeley

Edited by

Rod Smith

Peter Baker

Kaplan Harris

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BerkeleyLos AngelesLondon

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

2014 by The Regents of the University of California

For acknowledgments of permissions, please see page 459.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Creeley, Robert, 19262005.

[Correspondence. Selections]

The selected letters of Robert Creeley / edited by Rod Smith, Peter Baker, and Kaplan Harris.

pagescm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9780-520241602 (hardback)

eISBN 9780520956612

1. Creeley, Robert, 19262005Correspondence.2. Poets, American20th centuryCorrespondence.I. Smith, Rod, 1962editor of compilation.II. Baker, Peter, 1955editor of compilation.III. Harris, Kaplan, 1975editor of compilation.IV. Title.

PS 3505. R 43 Z 482014

811.54dc232013026610

Manufactured in the United States of America

23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z 39.481992 ( R 2002) ( Permanence of Paper ).

What you do is how you get along.

What you did is all it ever means.

ROBERT CREELEY, PLACE TO BE

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project would not have been possible without the generous support of Penelope Creeley. She has responded to our every question with detail and encouragement. We wish to thank our press editors Rachel Berchten, Laura Cerruti, Mary Francis, and Kim Hogeland for seeing the manuscript through the production process. Forrest Gander assisted with electronic files from the very end of Creeleys life. Charles Bernstein, Benjamin Friedlander, Peter Gizzi, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, and Tom Raworth were among those closest to Creeley who deserve our thanks.

Michael Davidson deserves our gratitude for detailed feedback from the beginning to the end of our work on the manuscript. We wish to thank colleagues and staff at Bridge Street Books, Towson University, and St. Bonaventure University. Thanks go to the Honors College at Towson University and its dean at the time, Maria Fracasso, for providing material support for reproduction of archival materials. Thanks also go to Danielle Frownfelter for research assistance at St. Bonaventure University.

We wish to acknowledge the following curators and librarians who assisted in the search for letters and who fielded our many inquiries both big and small. They offered expertise and unfailing generosity often in the face of severe budget cuts and staffing shortages during the period of our research: Michael Basinski, curator; James Maynard, assistant curator; and staff members at the Poetry Collection, the University at Buffalo; Lynda Corey Claassen, director, Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California, San Diego; Melissa Watterworth, curator of library, Natural History and Rare Book Collection, for assistance with archival materials from the Charles Olson Research Collection, Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries; William McPheron, the William Saroyan Curator for British and American Literature at Stanford University Libraries; Polly Armstrong, public services manager; and Margaret Kimball, university archivist, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford; Nancy Kuhl, curator of poetry, Yale Collection of American Literature, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Tony Power, Contemporary Literature Collection, Special Collections & Rare Books Division, Bennett Library, Simon Fraser University; John Hodge, curator, Modern Literature Collection/Manuscripts, Olin Library, Washington University; Molly Schwartzburg, Cline Curator of British and American Literature; and Richard Workman, research librarian, Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas at Austin; Nicolette A. Dobrowolski, reference and access services librarian, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library; Marvin J. Taylor, director, Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University; Isaac Gewirtz, curator, and Anne Garner, librarian, Berg Collection, the New York Public Library; Becky Cape, head of reference and public services, the Lilly Library, Indiana University; Carrie Hintz, processing archivist, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Butler Library, Columbia University; Holly Snyder, North American History librarian and university archivist, John Hay Library, Brown University; Russell Maylone, curator, McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University Library; David M. Hays, archivist, University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries; Genie Guerard, manuscripts librarian, UCLA Library, Department of Special Collections; James M. Smith, assistant curator, Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, the Ohio State University Libraries; and the late Aggie Stillman, director of Sage Archives, Sage College.

Many friends and colleagues offered advice that helped shape the present volume. This company includes Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Anselm Berrigan, Michael Gizzi, Anne Waldman, Elizabeth Willis, Bill Morgan, Leslie Scalapino, Anselm Hollo, Philip Levy, Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop, Terry Cooney, Michael Kelleher, Libbie Rifkin, Lisa Jarnot, Kevin Killian, Lee Ann Brown, Tony Torn, Susan Howe, Steve Clay, Carolyn Forch, Harry Mattison, Marcella Durand, Jerome Rothenberg, Robert Grenier, Barrett Watten, Stephen Fredman, Michael Ruby, Cathy Eisenhower, Mark Wallace, Lorraine Graham, Tom Orange, Al Filreis, Bruce Jackson, Diane Christian, Jessica Smith, John Roche, Ed Sanders, Jen Bervin, Catherine Wagner, Michael Boughn, Cass Clarke, Victor Coleman, Albert Glover, David Landrey, Donald Wellman, Marilyn Brakhage, Phil Solomon, Fred Wah, Lauren Matz, Nancy Kuhl, and Richard Deming. Gary Lovesky, Genevieve Vidanes, and Martin Reddy opened their homes during travel research; Martin also rescued correspondence files that were corrupted by computer viruses. Mel Nichols, Deborah Lesko Baker, and Maggie Harris patiently endured the ballad of despairing editors, and we send them our gratitude.