Robert Creely and John Ashbery

After reading Creely’s poems, I couldn’t help but love the dude. I’m not sure I can distill exactly what it was about Creely or his poems that I loved so much… the more I try, the more I fail, but at this point in the semester I feel like that’s a good sign that I enjoyed the poetry. I wonder if it would be possible to come up with a more vague or un-critical method for judging poetry? Probably not.

I found Creely’s poems delightful in a William Carlos Williams way: they are elegantly spare– minimalistic, but intimate at the same time. Like Williams, Creely’s poems affirm the beauty of everyday “common” speech. I was a bit disappointed when I heard the audio of Williams’ reading, so I hesitated to even listen to Creely’s recording. I’m so glad I did. Creely’s reading was its own experience, and I enjoyed listening to him just as much as I enjoyed reading his poems on the page. I might have listened to “I Know a Man” a dozen or so times… (there are several different readings of this poem on the Penn Sound page, so it was kind of cool to compare them).

Again, I really don’t know what it is about “I Know a Man” that I found so delightful. Paradoxically, I found it slightly heartbreaking, especially when I heard the audio. Creely departs from Williams in the haltering, trembling voice of the speaker. He reads nearly all of the line breaks aloud, regardless of enjambment. My favorite was line 5:

 “. . . the darkness sur- / rounds us . . .”

Some critics find this break melodramatic, but it may have been my favorite moment in the poem. When Creely reads it aloud, his quavering voice emphasizes the broken up syllables, underscoring the line’s emotional force. The nervous speaker (who is always talking), terrified of the existential darkness closing in on him, is then jerked back to reality by his “friend” (who is called John, although that is not his name) in the last stanza. Apparently, the speaker is driving a car, and all his chatter about his inner fears might be distracting him from the task at hand (operating a motor vehicle). Even though the friend might be a little exasperated with the poem's speaker (henceforth referred to as Bob), I’m glad he’s there with him, because it’s probably not a good idea for Bob to be alone when he’s in such a state. Also, Bob needs help getting out of his own head, and don’t we all need help with this from time to time?

John Ashbery is another poet who seems less concerned with “making sense,” as he does with the fact that the world signifies to us at all– at least when we are paying attention. In “Some Trees,” the speaker sees beauty in (yep) “some trees” on an ordinary winter morning:  

Some Trees
These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.

And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges

A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.

I love how in the second stanza, you and I “are suddenly what the trees try / To tell us we are: / That their merely being there / Means something . . .” And later, the notion that we didn't invent "such comeliness" reminds us to pay attention; the world is worth puzzling over.

In Ashbery’s poem, we are surrounded not by darkness, but by a "silence already filled with noises..." Like the trees that give their “still performance” in the first stanza, the world speaks in a language we can’t always understand. But Ashbery reminds us that the fact the world even speaks at all is astonishing. The act of interpretation doesn’t have to paralyze us! Perhaps the “still performance” that is hiding in plain sight is an invitation to something amazing.