Customer Reviews

For Love: Poems 1950-1960

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This is the book which first put Creeley on the poetic map in a large way. It collects poems from three other previously published books. The title poem is the most well- known and perhaps the best known poem Creeley was to write.
Creeley in later years became much appreciated for his ability to encourage younger poets.
As a young poet he turned to William Carlos Williams for direction. And there is something similar in their writing especially the love of shorter poems, the connection with everyday speech, incident and life.
Creeley said he was not the person of great causes but that what he cared about was people, not in the abstract, but in specific and particular relationships. He had many friends who were poets, and his great friend and mentor Elder Olsen was with him in the founding of 'Black Mountain College'.
Creeley said of his own poetry that he wrote it in batches of six or seven poems, in a quiet place, and that he did not revise. His writing was connected intimately with speaking, and also with listening and improvising. There is a connection with jazz music also.
I find his work has a sincerity, and that his voice is one which demands to be trusted. I do not find that he has great music, nor do I know the kinds of memorable lines I most love. But that is just me.
Here is a small part of the title poem of this collection.
It is an excerpt but it gives a true feeling of the kind of tentative, spoken , direct and often moving poetry he writes.

"Love, what do I think
to say. I cannot say it.
What have you become to ask,
what have I made you into,

companion, good company,
crossed legs with skirt, or
soft body under
the bones of the bed.

Nothing says anything
but that which it wishes
would come true, fears
what else might happen in

some other place, some
other time not this one.
A voice in my place, an
echo of that only in yours.

Let me stumble into
not the confession but
the obsession I begin with
now. For you

also (also)
some time beyond place, or
place beyond time, no
mind left to

say anything at all,
that face gone, now.
Into the company of love
it all returns."