Voting Station

Robert Creeley

Please vote to return to collections.

Poet

The Resume

    (May 21, 1926-March 30, 2005)
    Born in Arlington, Massachusetts
    Black Mountain poet
    Known for his minimalist style
    Poetry collections include ‘For Love: Poems 1950-1960,’ ‘’The Charm: Early and Uncollected Poems,’ ‘Divisions and Other Early Poems,’ ‘The Finger: Poems 1966-1969,’ ‘The Door: Selected Poems,’ ‘So There: Poems 1976-1983,’ ‘Just in Time: Poems 1984-1994’ and ‘On Earth: Last Poems and an Essay’
    New York State Poet Laureate (1989-91)
    Won the Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1999)

Why he might be annoying:

    He was suspended from Harvard for stealing a door.
    He got into a lot of drunken fights in the ‘50s, including one with Jackson Pollock.
    He was married three times, divorced twice.
    He had an affair with fellow poet Kenneth Rexroth’s wife.
    John Simon commented that two things could be said about his poems: ‘They are short; they are not short enough.’

Why he might not be annoying:

    He lost his left eye in an accident when he was four.
    He served as an ambulance driver in India and Burma during World War II.
    His writing style was influenced by jazz music and abstract expressionist painting.
    US poet laureate Robert Hass called Creeley’s ‘I Know a Man’ ‘the poem of the decade [the 1950s].’

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 110 Votes: 52.73% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying