It was sad to recieve word of Robert Creeley's passing. In my opinion the greatest American poet of the last half-century. At the local corporate chain bookstore, a National Poetry Month display features books by Maya Angelou and Billy Corgan, but nothing by Creeley. So it goes, the perception of the mass-markets.

One of my favorite Creeley poems:

The Memory

Like a river she was,
huge roily mass of water
carrying tree trunks
and divers drunks.

Like a Priscilla, a feminine Benjamin,
a whore gone right over
the falls,
she was.

Did you know her.
Did you love her, brother.
Did wonder pour down
on the whole goddamn town.

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