Edgar Allen Poe: Creeley's Other Country of Origin

Where does Robert Creeley come from--I mean, as a voice? I've known for years his origins in Samuel Beckett tempered by William Carlos Williams. But now I know there is in him, too, the intimate dread of Edgar Allen Poe. However, Poe's terror and claustrophobia have been tempered, via Beckett, to unflinching mindfulness. Creeley's first duty is that of the Cartesian 'I-Am' clinging to the life raft of words in the perfect, ceasless storm of perception. He is admirable in the ruggedness of his observation--drowned already in the consciousness that contains all, but still feeling the self as turret and battered enclosure. The 'I' is the seed of God that refuses to let go and become the full flower called, by dualists, God.

Here is the poem which gave me Creeley's link to Poe--a glorious short story of a lyric called "The World," opened to by chance this morning. In this poem, Creeley sees an apparition of his dead brother-in-law who hovers between him and his wife in the pre-dawn. Intent on visiting his sister, the ghost is forced to see Creeley by the sheer unthwartable will of the circumstance. Creeley has to make a decision to comfort the ghost or his sleeping wife and chooses her. But by doing so, the chimera is somehow set free from whatever need had made it manifest. Once it departs, Creeley's wife awakens and knows what has happened. Let the living haunt the living.

THE WORLD

I wanted so ably
to reassure you, I wanted
the man you took to be me,

to comfort you, and got
up, and went to the window,
pushed back, as you asked me to,

the curtain, to see
the outline of the trees
in the night outside.

The light, love,
the light we felt then,
greyly, was it, that

came in, on us, not
merely my hands or yours,
or a wetness so comfortable,

but in the dark then
as you slept, the grey
figure came so close

and leaned over,
between us, as you
slept, restless, and

my own face had to
see it, and be seen by it,
the man it was, your

grey lost tired bewildered
brother, unused, untaken--
hated by love, and dead,

but not dead, for an
instant, saw me,myself
the intruder, as he was not.

I tried to say, it is
all right, she is
happy, you are no longer

needed. I said,
he is dead, and he
went as you shifted

and woke, at first afraid,
then knowing by my own knowing
what had happened--

and the light then
of the sun coming
for another morning
in the world.

--Robert Creeley, "Words," Scribners, 1967