The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1975-2005

Robert Creeley died in 2005 while this second volume of his Collected Poems, which covers the last three decades, was being edited. This hefty collection includes Creeley’s final works and solidifies his position as one of the premier post-WWII poets. His deceptively simple style made the deliberate seem effortless, and he had a rare gift for being fully present in the poem—self-aware—without seeming the least self-conscious or preening. In reading the poems all together, it becomes clear how carefully crafted they are, with a double-tension between line and sentence. UC Press has also re-published the first volume of Creeley’s collected poems in a lovely companion edition, although they’ve left out the essay that accompanies his last poems in On Earth, published earlier this year.