20 May Remembering Robert Creeley: Onward #4

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.

JUST MY IMAGINATION

The sea makes the shoreline
by stopping; whyever

it graces to stop
just there is not us.

(“A hand alone
in the universe

would still be a left
or right hand.”)

Would that I could
be the whole way we are,

but in broken form, making,
like a word surrounded

by those that’ve led to it
working in its move,

that big, deep-going
sense come back,

no fixed or pure report
yet somehow love.

—Graham Foust

YOU KNOW THE WOMAN
after Creeley

As you sd to yr
friend, for no reason,
just to be talking—John, you

sd, which was not her
name, the darkness in
side us, what

can we do to end
it, of course, we shall &
why not, bury the goddamn body and

live, she sd,
for the hell of it, look
how we’re living anyway

April 2026
—Celia White

I recall having Bob come and read at our Visiting Artist Series at Hilbert College, but I also recall a moment when he sat in on my creative writing class. During the break, I tried to pick good brain about how he approaches teaching these classes. His answer was very simple and sweet. He said that the main thing he does was treat each student with dignity. I thought that was a great response.

—Anthony Hughes

i knew bob socially from parties after readings at the former jung center and elsewhere. sadly, i never took a class with him. when i attended college it was for art, for teacher training, not poetry or literature. i asked him if he’d write a blurb for the back of my first chapbook, body of the work, if he was comfortable doing so.

he wrote this:
“ryki zuckerman practices the lively art of upfront truth-telling with a valid poetic license. Viz, she enjoys her work and, if you can open your ears and hear it, so will you.”

—ryki zuckerman

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.

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