The awful thing, as a kid reading, was that you came to the end of the story, and that was it. I mean, it would be heartbreaking that there was no more of it.
Robert CreeleyWriting is the same as music. It’s in how you phrase it, how you hold back the note, bend it, shape it, then release it. And what you don’t play is as important as what you do say.
Robert CreeleyLove, if you love me, lie next to me. Be for me, like rain, the getting out of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi- lust of intentional indifference. Be wet with a decent happiness.
Robert CreeleyI don’t think any man writing can worry about what the act of writing costs him, even though at times he is very aware of it.
Robert CreeleySuddenly the whole imagination of writing and editorial and newspaper and all these presumptions about who am I reading this, and who else other people may be, and all that, it's so grimly brutal!
Robert CreeleyWhat a great thing! To be a writer! Words are something you can carry in your head. You can really 'travel light.'
Robert CreeleyThere are a lot of editorials that have nothing to do with anything like that. But I was just thinking of that sense of prose as being very responsible and perceptive, thoughtful, intimate, and contriving a quote statement.
Robert CreeleyI did however used to think, you know, in the woods walking, and as a kid playing in the woods, that there was a kind of immanence there — that woods, and places of that order, had a sense, a kind of presence, that you could feel; that there was something peculiarly, physically present, a feeling of place almost conscious ... like God. It evoked that.
Robert CreeleyI know this body is impatient. I know I constitute only a meager voice and mind. Yet I loved, I love. I want no sentimentality. I want no more than home.
Robert CreeleyMoon, moon, when you leave me alone all the darkness is an utter blackness, a pit of fear, a stench, hands unreasonable never to touch. But I love you. Do you love me. What to say when you see me.
Robert CreeleyStill, no one finally knows what a poet is supposed either to be or to do. Especially in this country, one takes on the job—because all that one does in America is considered a "job"—with no clear sense as to what is required or where one will ultimately be led. In that respect, it is as particular an instance of a "calling" as one might point to. For years I've kept in mind, "Many are called but few are chosen." Even so "called," there were no assurances that one would be answered.
Robert Creeley