{"id":20,"date":"2022-02-05T11:51:06","date_gmt":"2022-02-05T11:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/?p=20"},"modified":"2022-08-21T18:06:36","modified_gmt":"2022-08-21T18:06:36","slug":"robert-creeley-a-biography-516-pp-by-ekbert-faas-with-maria-trombacco-mcgill-queens-university-press-canada-and-university-of-new-england-press-us-2001","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/?p=20","title":{"rendered":"Robert Creeley: A Biography<\/em> (516 pp), by Ekbert Faas with Maria Trombacco, McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press (Canada) and University of New England Press (US), 2001"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As Graham Robb put it, \u201creaders of\u00a0po\u00e8tes maudits<\/i>\u00a0often identify with the poets themselves, [whereas] critics and biographers tend to identify with the parents.\u201d Like Robb\u2019s biography of Rimbaud, Faas\u2019s\u00a0Robert Creeley<\/i> counts among the rare exceptions to this rule. As Eric Miller writes: \u201cOut of an unsavoury pulp of booze, bruises and tears arose Robert Creeley\u2019s admirable poems. Faas plausibly prefers the work Creeley wrote before he was institutionalized, that is, in the bland \u2013 rather than psychiatric \u2013 sense. Faas\u2019s discussion of the poet\u2019s later work is somewhat cursory, somewhat mocking; perhaps the intended effect of such mockery is to revive the fire in the indignant ageing poet. Derision as a stimulus to growth occasionally works \u2026 Ekbert Faas\u2019s account of Creeley\u2019s life is immensely readable, phrased in something of the accelerated, demotic style – half scholarly, half journalistic \u2013 practised by Greil Marcus in Lipstick Traces<\/i>. Under the transient influence of this racy style, the reader may miss a time when university programmes did not entirely throttle the world of imaginative writing.\u201d (Canadian Review of Books<\/i>, 31, 2, 2002, 20-22)<\/p>\n

\u201cEkbert Faas, one of the foremost scholars of contemporary American poetry, began working on this biography 20 years ago, when Creeley authorized the project \u2026 In it, he focuses on Creeley\u2019s first 40 years, utilizing interviews with and writings by Creeley\u2019s friends and associates, especially the journals and memories of Creeley\u2019s first wife, Ann McKinnon.\u201d (Globe and Mail<\/i>, October 27, 2001, 23)<\/p>\n

\u201cBriefly stated, Faas admires the younger Robert Creeley for the raw-edged, nerve-screeching quality of his life and work, but he has little respect for what he became from the early 1960s forward, once fame and money were his for the taking \u2026 Faas gives a credible portrait of the artist and those closest to him.\u201d (Mark Melnicove, \u201cA Life Half Told,\u201d\u00a0Ruminator Review<\/i>, Winter 2001-2002, 55)<\/p>\n

\u201cEkbert Faas has chosen an audacious style for the first biography of one of the greatest American poets \u2026 Faas mimics Creeley\u2019s language and his rhetorical shifts, often to hallucinatory effect. The biography\u2019s appendix, which consists of the reminiscences of Ann MacKinnon, Creeley\u2019s first wife, heightens this effect, for in important particulars her view does not square with that of his letters. Still, if Faas is correct, the facts are disturbing, whatever they are \u2026 the biography is mesmerizing.\u201d (David Andrews,\u00a0Review of Contemporary Fiction<\/i>, 22, 2, 2005, 250)<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this biography, the biographer turns into the biographee, \u2018impersonating voices, senses of humour, ironies, sarcasms, hypocrisies.\u2019 The result is remarkable, and one easily forgets that Faas\u2019s intense book is in fact based on a rather simple and familiar premise \u2013 namely that, at least in the case of the poet, a wild life generates better works.\u00a0Le style est l\u2019homme m\u00eame<\/i>, and the nicer the man the duller the poetry. For Faas, the philandering, boozing, drug-abusing and wife-beating Creeley, while personally none too appealing, was a more interesting writer than the older, wiser but also wearier sage mumbling \u2018post middle-age\u2019 platitudes about life and death \u2026 Such ventriloquizing is not limited to the book\u2019s protagonist; Faas easily slips into the minds, or holds the pens, of Creeley\u2019s friends and disciples (\u2018How would a man whose writing could cause such turmoil in your brain affect you in person?\u2019) and troubled wives (\u2018Would she have to give him shots?\u2019) \u2026 I enjoyed this book, as I would a well-written novel, realizing at the same time that\u00a0Robert Creeley<\/i>, in method and intent, takes us back to the olden days, when anxious biographers stayed clear of any discussions of their subject\u2019s works while literary critics, as Walter Jackson Bate once lamented, shrank from \u2018the rich and embarrassing complexities of what it meant to be a living person.\u2019\u201d (Christoph Irmscher, \u201cLovely Damn Things,\u201d\u00a0Canadian Literature<\/i>, 180, Spring 2004, 129-30)<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first book-length biography of one of the world\u2019s preeminent poets, covering the first 40 years of his life \u2026 well-written, well-researched.\u201d (L. Berk,\u00a0Choice<\/i>, 39, 8, 2002)<\/p>\n

\u201cEkbert Faas, the author of this new biography, had earlier edited Creeley\u2019s correspondence with the Canadian poet Irving Layton, as well as an anthology of essays and interviews \u2026 in which Creeley plays a prominent part.\u201d (Marjorie Perloff, \u201cA Survivor,\u201d\u00a0Times Literary Supplement<\/i>, April 26 2002, 5-6).
\nAlso see E. Faas\u2019s reply, particularly to Professor Perloff\u2019s claim, that he gave a \u201clurid portrait of the artist\u201d: \u201cPersonally, I couldn\u2019t think of a higher tribute to the younger poet than my comparing him to Rimbaud. But if I\u2019d guessed that anyone might glumly misconstrue my upbeat portrait of him to this effect into that of a \u2018drunk, a heavy drug-user and a reckless womanizer,\u2019 I might have added that his so-called \u2018iniquities\u2019 along these lines strike me as rather dilettantish at worst. Also, there was no need for my allegedly scurrying around in search of \u2018new and spicy bits\u2019 for my \u2018lurid portrait.\u2019 Plenty of such \u2018bits,\u2019 which we deliberately suppressed, remain in my possession.\u201d (TLS<\/i>, June 7, 2002, 17)<\/p>\n

\u201cCreeley must be valued for his poetry \u2013 or scrapped for it. I confess that at the time of\u00a0For Love<\/i>\u00a0(1962) and\u00a0Words<\/i>\u00a0(1967) I had a high regard for him as the heir to William Carlos Williams\u2019s minimalist aesthetic and the author of such zeitgeistful poems as \u201cThe Dishonest Mailmen\u201d \u2026 But rereading Creeley\u2019s poetry in connection with Faas\u2019s biography I have become skeptical. I begin to think that the ones who benefit most from a policy of scrupulous minimalism are those who don\u2019t know how to decorate: Paint the walls white, strip the floor, furnish the bare space with futons and pine-plank bookcases \u2013 and maintain an enigmatic silence by which one may come in time to have a reputation for depth.\u201d (Thomas M. Disch, \u201cCreeley in His Time,\u201d\u00a0Weekly Standard<\/i>, 7, 8, 2001, 34-36)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe angriest bohemian, who nurtured so many avant-garde careers with his small magazines while pulling\u00a0The Island\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0For Love\u00a0<\/i>out of his bag of tricks, gets unvarnished but admiring treatment here \u2026 Despite late-career reservations, the account of Creeley\u2019s first 40 years embraces the writer like a comfortable old jacket, and this biography feels a good fit.\u201d (Kirkus Book Reviews<\/i>, Nov. 2001)<\/p>\n

\u201cReturning to Robert Creeley\u2019s work, with Ekbert Faas\u2019s extraordinary biography, I am struck not only by the limitations the poet has imposed on himself, but also by how distinctly he now seems to belong to a particular cultural moment, in which stress was laid on \u2018process\u2019 in art, as often as not as a substitute for content \u2026 fascinating.\u201d (James Campbell, \u201cWas That a Real Poem?,\u201d\u00a0Threepenny Review<\/i>, 90, Summer 2002, 15-16)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Graham Robb put it, \u201creaders of\u00a0po\u00e8tes maudits\u00a0often identify with the poets themselves, [whereas] critics and biographers tend to identify with the parents.\u201d Like Robb\u2019s biography of Rimbaud, Faas\u2019s\u00a0Robert Creeley counts among the rare exceptions to this rule. As Eric … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":561,"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}