ROBERT CREELEY

Robert Creeley left the planet on March 30, 2005 at the tender age of 78. But his work will be here, doing its amazing thing, for a long, long time to come.

I met Bob Creeley when I was a young man, eager to learn more about Charles Olson's work. Charles had died a few years previous, and I'd discovered his Maximus and was trying to grasp it. So, I first took interest in Bob's work as a gateway to Charles', and read bits of their correspondence toward that end. Fascinated, I took a trip out to Boulder, CO to meet Bob at a writers conference—what later became the Naropa Institute. At the conference, he was swarmed by eager youngsters and I had little opportunity to talk with him. But I did hear him deliver a knock-out reading, and in that instant, began to get what he was doing, and through him, what Charles was up to. I caught up with him the next day and told him I'd like to talk. He said, come see me in Buffalo sometime. And so, after a long hitch-hike home to Oneonta, New York, via Gothenberg, Nebraska, which is another story, I got myself to Buffalo in a borrowed car and sat in on some of Bob's classes. When he found out I was sleeping in the car during my weekly visits (I took an undergrad class with him on Wednesdays, then a graduate class on Thursdays), he invited me to stay over in a spare bedroom at his place on Fargo Street, above the small grocery. There, in his kitchen, we had our chances to talk. And, without wanting to sound now as I was then, a dumb young acolyte, I must say that he changed my perception of, well, most things-gave me a sense of language as something to be breathed, spoken, and shaped into useful, nuanced patterns of meaning-making some real sense of the world. I've never forgotten his generosity.

If there is one heroic figure in postmodern American letters, the figure of outward as Olson called him, it's Robert Creeley. His work—all of it—is a treasure to those of us searching for our own voices. His life story is an astounding one; he's one of those first few postwar Americans for whom bohemianism, in the words of Michael Hrebeniak, "signified a dissenting community of men and women pursuing new values through creativity." For Bob, creativity isn't mood, it's doing the work. Like others of that postwar time—our own Fielding Dawson, certainly, as well as Olson, Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, Edward Dorn, others of the so-called Black Mountain school, and the Beats, and the New York writers and artists, and diverse individuals who were inventing American postwar culture anywhere—the work holds up. The experiment in their "experimental" work was lifelong, outward, persistent and bright. Always worth another look.

Here is a starting point for finding more of Bob Creeley on the Web. http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/creeley/obit/buffalo-news-april-8.html

Get a copy of "the best film about an American poet ever made."

Henry Ferrini's extraordinary documentary features Robert Creeley, John Malkovich, Jonathan Williams, Vincent Ferrini, Anne Waldman, Michael Rumaker and many others. Take a look»

Check out Bill Bevan's six inks

An adventurous artist and musician composing himself across America. And here»

The Tin Hearts

Live audience response to this four-piece incarnation is spooky-strong—somewhere out in front of the tight percussion, baleful keyboards, guitar wail and carny vocals, this band awakens dancing ghosts who will cut the rug from under your feet. Check them out»

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BASEBALL

For those with more than a casual interest in the sport of baseball, I offer my book, Bushville: Life and Time in Amateur Baseball, published by McFarland in 2001. Bushville locates baseball not on the television, nor in our grand new retro big league stadiums, but in sandlots and ballyards off the beaten track, where amateur players play for the love of it. It's been called "some of the freshest, most memorable baseball writing seen in quite some time." You can find it at Amazon.com and at McFarland's web site.

I've also published a baseball column on the Web, which you can read here»