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Maximum Energy

When Robert Creeley talks, people listen. As one of this country's most influential contemporary writers, Creeley's work spans over 60 years and stands alone as some of the most revolutionary work this century has seen.

Tomorrow, Creeley will bring his work to the University of Arizona as a participant in the continuing series "Poetry Now and Next: A Millennial Celebration" sponsored by the UA Poetry Center.

As part of the series, which pairs acclaimed writers with an emerging writer of their choice, Creeley has invited poet, Maggie Nelson who is also "a poet of directness," said Alison Deming, director of the Poetry Center and professor of creative writing.

The two writers are a sharp pairing because they say what they mean in a simple, lucid diction. Creeley's poetry is "revolutionary for its minimalism and clarity - maximum energy in a poem that takes up minimum space," Deming said.

As Creeley himself writes of what he holds as his ideal poem, "words are returned to an almost primal circumstance...so that they speak rather than someone speaking through them." Pain is central to his work - a sharp, stinging pain evoked in such images as "I can/ feel my eye breaking" ("The Window") and "I think I grow tensions/ like flowers." ("The Flower").

Creeley's "emotions are lyrics ... the right feeling of the poem describing its time," writes poet, Robert Duncan.

Of Nelson, Creeley writes, "I love the way all she says keeps moving, insistent, often abrasive ... "

"I say what I mean," Nelson writes. Indeed, both poets maintain a terse and vibrant edginess to their work that grabs and jabs at even the most inattentive listener.

Born in Arlington, Mass., Creeley attended Harvard and has worked as an ambulance driver, World War II American Field serviceman, chicken farmer, expatriate, publisher and, since 1966, professor of Poetry and Humanities at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Creeley is most often identified with the group of influential writers associated with both Black Mountain College and the San Francisco Renaissance of the 1950s and 60s. Without an impulse to enclose his work solely within the literary, Creeley has also collaborated with jazz and alternative rock musicians and has worked for more than three decades with various visual artists.

Nelson is author of a chapbook, "Pacific" (Orchard Street Press, 1995), and a collection with the poet Cynthia Nelson entitled "Not Sisters" (Soft Skull Press, 1996). She is "urban, edgy ... and writes a spare, yet energetic short-lined poem that has many of the virtues of Creeley's," Deming said.

The two writers will read from their work tomorrow night in the Modern Languages Auditorium and will hold a colloquium discussion session on Thursday in the Swede Johnson Building.