20 May Remembering Robert Creeley: Onward #3
At Just Buffalo Literary Center we’re proud to present this ongoing collection of community remembrances honoring Robert Creeley’s life & legacy in Western New York and beyond.
Thank you to everyone who has shared your memory, reflection, or personal story.
My Creeley Memory
I was very fortunate to have met Robert Creeley in the late 90s while I was a student at Daemen University. It was Daemen College at the time and my English professor, Dr. Peter Siedlecki, invited Bob to come to his class to read and have a short Q&A. I was enthralled! He was a great performer of his poetry, his presence was exciting, and his poems were quietly moving. From this simple introduction, I asked Bob to be interviewed for Daemen’s student run newspaper, to which he readily agreed. I included a poem of his, Oedipus, to accompany the article. To me, this was all very exciting. Publishing a poem and interview with a real live beatnik made my late-in-life college experience electrifying.
If this was the end of the story, it would be a simple memory of a famed poet helping out a young man further his education. Thankfully, it was not the end. The Student Association staff who supervised the newspaper found a few issues with my reporting. The interview was fine, but the poem was found to be unpublishable. There was a word in the poem, motherfucker, to be precise, that ruffled the feathers of the kind Daemen staff who were helping us prepare the newspaper.
A fuss was made and after a lot of discussion, I relented. However, I left a big blank square in the front page of the newspaper where the poem was to be, where I added in a small diatribe about censorship. In my opinion, motherfucker is a lovely word, and one that fully describes his subject, Oedipus. In my response I intoned the evils of censoring art, the famous person who we were censoring, and even brought in the wise words of the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from his Specimens of the Table Talk. “I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; — poetry = the best words in the best order.” Clearly, Creeley was using the best word in this poem.
None of this helped my case. Many of the students on campus were oblivious to the fact we had a student newspaper, many others didn’t care about the minor bit of censoring, as motherfucker is not a family friendly word, while others thought that if I exercised some better judgement, I could have found a better poem to promote.
Fortunately for me, all the senior staff at Daemen, from the President, Vice President, and the Dean were all English professors, and understood what I was trying to accomplish, even if they would have suggested another way to achieve my goal.
I was elated! This minor incident lit a fire in my soul. This was the power of publishing fully on display in a small college in Amherst, NY. I felt like The Washington Post’s, Benjamin Bradlee, fighting to publish the Pentagon Papers, or even Joseph Pulitzer, the newspaper editor who had to navigate against government intimidation and wartime censorship. I was, of course, none of these things, but I am certain I felt a similar feeling in my heart they must have felt.
Months after this, I got to talk with Bob after his poetry reading at Hilbert College. He greeted me as an old friend, which surprised me a bit. He asked about the interview, and I told him about the censorship of his poem. All he said was, “Sorry for the troubles, man!”
After this incident, there was no more newspapers, but I was invited to restart the Daemen student run poetry journal, The Step Ascending. The work I did on this small journal became the basis for my press, BlazeVOX [books], which I am still working on to this day. Near my office I have a large portrait of Robert Creeley, a lovely poster from his 80th birthday celebration. It is an ever-present reminder of the power of poetry, the power of publishing, and the power one life can have on another’s.
—Geoffrey Gatza
“I worked at the Courier-Express — Buffalo’s morning newspaper for quite a while — where Robert Creeley was highly regarded in the newsroom. On a website — www.nyshistoricnewspapers.org — run by the Empire State Library Network, digital copies of the newspaper are searchable. Below is an image containing a story about Mr. Creeley. To find it on the web, go to this link”
—Mitch Gerber
On The Twentieth Anniversary of Robert Creeley’s Eightieth Birthday Celebration
I could, in the name of reliability, dig through the internet’s archive to see if I could find the blog post I wrote the morning after A Poet in Buffalo which was held in May of 2006 for Creeley’s 80th birthday, but then I would prevent myself from having the opportunity to reminisce. One of the perks of reminiscing is that there is an implied relaxing of fact(s) that, say, a deposition doesn’t offer.There I was, recently back in Buffalo from the mid-Atlantic, mistakenly thinking the poetry community doesn’t reset every few years, excited about the future in this town that historically out performs literary expectations.
There we all were, in a recently renovated church. Books were being sold, folks were happy to see each other, and I was particularly excited as Amiri Baraka was on the bill with Tom Raworth and Joanne Kyger, all three of whom were a trinity of sorts for lots of poets that I met while going to readings in Washington, DC.
Today, I cannot tell you much about the readings that occurred that night. It was before the meteoric rise of social media. It was before smart phones. In hindsight, it was one of the last large gatherings in what feels distinctly like the before times. Before everything was documented, voluntarily, from multiple viewpoints; before a screen mediated much of one’s interactions with the outside world; before one could be present in body only. Was it a better time? No. It was simply a different time.
Today, I can tell you that during Amiri Baraka’s reading no one was listening to Baraka because of what was going on on-stage.
There was a young man. A young man who straddled, and occasionally, fell into the gap between creativity and mental illness. Now, most arts events might attract this type – and with good reason! – the arts should be a safe and welcoming space for the most vulnerable among us. Poetry, especially, has often kept the light on for these very folks. But, like the page, there are physical limits to what is possible.
This young man walked on stage. Down stage was Baraka. I recall him being more diminutive than I expected. I suppose there was a part of me that thought an outsized presence on the page would be echoed on the stage. Baraka had begun his reading like most; a few remarks, a few quips, and some context.
I’m beginning to break this memory free from the dusty shelf it has sat on. Baraka was on stage reading. He was down stage. Up stage, stage right there was a piano. I don’t think anyone needed a piano that night. A coincidental, decorative piano. It was to this piano that the young man mentioned above, slowly approached.
The young man quietly walked along the stage and then took the three steps up to join Baraka on stage. Baraka didn’t see him. The young man then quietly sat down at the piano. Baraka didn’t see him. The young man opened the fallboard. Baraka didn’t see him. The young man quietly pressed a key. Baraka didn’t hear him.
Baraka didn’t see him. We all did. The audience was enraptured in the negative. Baraka could’ve been addressing Kevin Thurston, telling everyone my most intimate secrets, and I wouldn’t have known. It wasn’t like watching a car crash. It was like knowing the driver ahead of you is drunk and you are left wondering if there will be an accident and, if so, what the damage will be.
On the far side of the auditorium, a poet and former Marine, Geoffrey Gatza got up. This might’ve been the only time I took my eyes off the stage. Gatza is a tall, large man. He made a bee-line around the outer perimeter of the audience to meet with then Just Buffalo Executive Director Mike Kelleher who was, like the rest of us, standing there unsure what the next move was to be.
If you are curious what tension is like, I invite you to listen to a founder of the Black Arts Movement, in his twilight years, read from the stage while a young white man might completely submarine his reading. If you are curious what ratcheting up the tension means, add a Marine ready to move to the mix.
This is where my memory ends. There is no climactic moment at the end. No one did anything and, eventually, the young man simply got off stage. We all looked at each other, silently reassuring one another that the near incident could now pass safely into a quirky memory.
—Kevin Thurston
I introduced myself to “Professor Creeley” in a parking lot at UB. Immediately Bob, he invited me to his office hours. I was often the only woman in the room, even in 1999-2001. Bob always showed interest in me and my writing so we did an independent study which resulted in a chapbook of poems and paintings. He attended my graduation at UB, apparently that was rare. He encouraged me to attend UMaine-Orono and get what I could from its masters program. Our correspondence was never huge but we stayed in touch, and I was honored to say a few words at his 80th birthday celebration in Buffalo. I wish I could attend this celebration of my mentor and friend with you all in person. Love from a poet ex-pat in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and as dear Bob would say, Onward!
—Robin F. Brox
Share YOUR Remembrance
Do you have a Robert Creeley memory or tribute to share? Let us know! Through this community remembrance project, your words will join others across time & place to honor the life that Robert Creeley lived here, among us.