The Poem
There is a deceptive simplicity to many of Robert Creeley’s poems which tends to camouflage the power the poet brings to his subject and temporarily delay a full apprehension of the work’s psychological penetration. A typical example is “I Know a Man,” one of Creeley’s most anthologized early lyrics, which is written in the discursive and reflective voice Creeley often uses. Its four stanzas are essentially a continuous expression in which nearly every word is a unit of meaning, its position and location amid punctuation, space, and other words crucial to its purpose.
This poem is an example of “open verse” or “composition by field,” which Creeley developed through his friendship and correspondence with Charles Olson; it is employed throughout the poems collected in For Love (1962) to permit Creeley an “obsessive confrontation with solipsism” (as Charles Altieri identified it) and an occasion for close scrutiny of the psychological mood of the speaker.
The opening lines, beginning “As I sd to my/ friend,” plunge into what appears to be an ongoing dialogue. Although there is a suggestion that the poem is part of a conversation, it is also a version of an inner dialogue in which dual components of the poet’s psyche are involved. The ambiguity is introduced in the second stanza when the speaker observes, after what seems like a direct address to his friend—the person called “John”—that it “was not his/ name.” When the second stanza asserts that “the darkness sur-/ rounds us,” it is evident that this is as much a statement of psychic perception as a literal account of a specific occurrence.
When the poet asks, “what/ can we do against/ it,” the second stanza joined to the third by the query, a mood of resignation begins to develop, but it is immediately challenged by a reversal that pivots around the phrase “or else” and abruptly moves toward direct action in the proposal to “buy a goddamn big car.” This assertion links the philosophical with the physical, and the bold proposition to do something is both a specific possibility and a figure for choosing to take action. After the word “car,” the third stanza concludes with a comma, a more significant pause than the previous connections between stanzas, which lack any punctuation; this sets off the last stanza, making it almost a response to the previous ones.
Once again, the opening line, “drive, he sd,” maintains a dual focus, referring both to the “I” who speaks first and the “he” who is the other part of the dialogue. There is a momentary agreement that action is necessary, but this is fractured almost immediately when it become evident that the word “drive” more properly belongs to the “I” who suggests buying the car, while “he” is warning “look/ out where yr going.” This admonition to retain an awareness of direction while acting reinforces the initial division in consciousness, but from an altered position.
Forms and Devices
The spare and urgent lyricism, as Charles Molesworth described it, which is the essence of Creeley’s style in “I Know a Man,” is developed through the employment of a vernacular mode of speech, by the arrangement of this language into tightly controlled rhythmic patterns, and by the organization of these rhythms into a structural frame that permits abrupt changes in psychic mood.
One of Creeley’s governing poetic principles is the precept that a poem cannot be arranged in any previously anticipated form, but that its shape develops from the circumstances of its composition. In “I Know a Man,” the concise, monosyllabic terseness of the first line establishes a clipped...
(This entire section contains 583 words.)
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form of utterance in which the weight of each unit of meaning is important. Creeley is particularly attentive to nuances of stress, so that the opening statement moves toward completion in the second line, underscoring the importance of the “friend” who is addressed. The line then continues toward the phrase “I am,” intensifying the personal nature of the declaration, a point pushed further by the third use of the word “I” to conclude the stanza. At the same time, the thought is carried directly to the next stanza by the power of the third “I” reaching across the space to the second use of “sd.”
This firm control of perspective culminates in the brilliant ambiguity of the last stanza, where, as Creeley has described it, “the poem protects itself” through syntax which compels a reflective consideration of the conclusion:
why not, buy a goddamn big car,drive, he sd, forchrist’s sake, lookout where yr going.
While it is a legitimate interpretation to regard the directive “drive” as a part of the proposal that “he” has made, as some critics have done, Creeley’s explanation that “[i]t’s the ‘I’ of the poem who is saying ‘why don’t we get out of here’it’s the friend who comes into it, who says ‘take it easy, look out where you’re going,’” shows how concerned he is about carefully controlling meaning. Creeley further observes that he could have placed a period after “drive,” but he believed that the “actual impulse” of the poem would eventually make the same point. His constant alertness to the complexity of language is also expressed in his choice of such abbreviations as “sd,” “yr,” and “&,” which help to carry the tension of the speaker’s voice throughout the poem, and which are in consonance with the compact nature of the speech as it moves from an arresting hesitancy to impulsive action. The division of the word “sur-/ rounds,” with its use of a hyphen, conveys not only the tentativeness of the speaker but also the sense of enclosure from which he is trying to escape.
The third stanza moves toward this escape as the poet considers possibilities. The rapid change of mood is captured by the positioning of the threatening “it, or else,” (suggesting unknown danger), followed by the sudden proposal, “shall we,” which includes both members of the dialogue. This moves toward the almost manic assurance of “&/ why not,” which is followed by the plunge into the specific, “buy a goddamn big car.” The success of the poem depends on the relationship of words and on Creeley’s sensitivity to the subtlest nuances of pitch, timbre, and sound duration. The absence of metaphor, metrical form, rhyme, figurative language, and other familiar technical devices places the total burden of meaning on word placement.
Bibliography
Allen, Donald, ed. Contexts of Poetry: Interviews with Robert Creeley, 1961-1971. Bolinas, Calif.: Four Seasons, 1973.
Clark, Tom. Robert Creeley and the Genius of the American Commonplace. New York: New Directions, 1993.
Edelberg, Cynthia. Robert Creeley’s Poetry: A Critical Introduction. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1978.
Faas, Ekbert, and Maria Trombaco. Robert Creeley: A Biography. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2001.
Ford, Arthur. Robert Creeley. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1978.
Foster, Edward Halsey. Understanding the Black Mountain Poets. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995.
Fox, Willard. Robert Creeley, Edward Dorn, and Robert Duncan: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989.
Oberg, Arthur. Modern American Lyric: Lowell, Berryman, Creeley, and Plath. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1977.
Rifkin, Libbie. Career Moves: Olson, Creeley, Zukofsky, Berrigan, and the American Avant-Garde. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000.
Terrell, Carroll, ed. Robert Creeley: The Poet’s Workshop. Orono, Maine: National Poetry Foundation, 1984.
Wilson, John, ed. Robert Creeley’s Life and Work: A Sense of Increment. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987.
