The first fifty years in the life of a great American poet.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Drawing on dozens of anecdotes and memoirs of Robert Creeley's contemporaries, as well as Creeley's own letters and papers, literary editor and scholar Faas (Young Robert Duncan; etc.) presents a largely unflattering portrait of the acclaimed poet's first 50 years. Having lost both his father and his left eye by age four, Creeley (b. 1926), in Faas's portrait, is on a perennial quest to heal his fractured ego. Growing up in a household dominated by women his mother and four sisters Creeley appeared to avenge himself on the women he seduced. Throughout his travels and marriages, he casually ensnared and then disposed of wives of close friends. Treating rivals with unbridled scorn, Creeley intermittently battled with the angels of creativity and the demons of conceit. He reacted to failure with impotence and then rage, resulting in violence imaginary or real and drinking bouts. When critic M.L. Rosenthal wrote not quite flatteringly about Creeley's poems, for example, Creeley concluded that Rosenthal had "something against him." Creeley's contemporaries, under Faas's gaze, don't fare much better: Kenneth Rexroth emerges as a jealous, deceitful, unstable cuckold amidst a circle of amoral, self-absorbed writers that included Denise Levertov, Jack Kerouac and Charles Olson. Despite numerous excerpts from his poetry and references to his considerable literary successes, there is little here to enlighten readers about Creeley's contributions to contemporary American poetry or about the regard accorded him by many in the world of poetry. To that end, the memoirs of Creeley's first wife, Ann MacKinnon, which are excerpted at length, are far more useful.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Review
"Robert Creeley is a major contribution to the understanding of Creeley's writing, and to an understanding of the important scene of the New American Poetry, especially in the years of its founding ... Faas's biography of the man is brutally honest (as is Creeley in his own writing) in its portrait of a driven, often violent and alienated consciousness who just happened to turn his demons into some of the most powerful poetry of our time." Douglas Barbour, Department of English, University of Alberta
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Robert Creeley, the first forty years,
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This review is from: Robert Creeley: A Biography (Hardcover)
As a longtime reader of Robert Creeley's work, I was lookingforward to this biography. I should have figured that Creeley would not authorize a "traditional" biographer, and Ekbert Faas's juxtaposition of different perspectives and inclusion of a huge chunk of (Creeley's first wife) Ann MacKinnon's autobiography/ diary as a 100 page coda make the book somewhat non-traditional (although the "life-writing" technique, where the "voice" of Creeley is present in the narrative, should be familiar to any reader of Nick Tosches' fine biography of Dean Martin). Creeley's pre-1970 poems would sometimes take a seemingly autobiographical moment and view it in intense detail, or take a slice of the persona's stream-of-consciousness and break it down into extreme close-up (not just to the level of the word, but to the level of the syllable). This biography now provides the "background" for those works. Many intimate details are given, but fortunately we are spared TOO MUCH intimate detail and Mr. Creeley is able to keep some things private! The book also does a fine job of showing Creeley's complex relationships with literary figures and the literary community over the years--RC has always devoted a lot of time to championing the work of his fellow writers (and thus turned me on to many writers who have become important components in my life-- thank you, Mr. Creeley!). My only complaint about this book is that right near the end (before the MacKinnon narrative), biographer Faas pretty much trashes the 80s/90s career of Creeley. It's as if Creeley's work (and, as written by Faas, his life too!) has become bland and commercial because RC is no longer as combative and angry and frayed-at-the-edges. This reminds me of the people who accuse punk-rockers of "selling out" when they stop cutting themselves with razorblades and smashing their heads against concrete walls when they get past age 40. What's wrong with Mr. Creeley enjoying life more, settling down, finding the eternal verities in the commonplace, and being a happy person? I admire the man's ability to evolve, and his work still uses language in fresh and unexpected ways while leading me to see life and relationships in similarly fresh and unexpected ways. Faas's inability to see the "whole picture" of Creeley's life leads me to question how much he really understood Creeley at ANY period in his life. Still, this is a necessary work for any Creeley reader or anyone who cares about post-WWII American poetry. I also commend Creeley for allowing his biographer such freedom (I'm reminded of Bob Dylan's film DON'T LOOK BACK in that way), although I came away from the book with even more respect for the man. Poetry is an important part of many people's lives thanks to Robert Creeley (both through his own pioneering work and his tireless championing of and providing an entryway into others' works), and this book does give the reader a sense of the man behind the work.
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