October 27, 1997

Preeminent American poet to present reading

By Barbara McKenna

Robert Creeley, a leading figure in modern American poetry, will present a public reading at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, November 5, in the Kresge College Seminar Room 159. The reading is free and open to the public.

Creeley was born in Massachusetts in 1926. After attending Harvard University for two years, he graduated from Black Mountain College in 1954, staying on to teach and edit The Black Mountain Review. In a distinguished career, he has won many prizes as well as acclaim from his contemporaries. According to John Ashbery, "He is the best we have."

Creeley has published over 80 books of poems, which have generated the collections For Love: Poems 1950-1960 (1962); Words (1967); The Finger: Poems 1966-1969 (1970); Selected Poems (1976); Later: New Poems (1979); The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley 1945-1975 (1983); and Selected Poems 1945-1990 (1991). Creeley has also published short stories, essays, letters, a novel, and a play, and has edited the collections of a number of other poets.

A resident of Buffalo, New York, Creeley is Samuel P. Capen Professor of Poetry and the Humanities at the State University of New York at Buffalo and former New York State Poet (1989-91). He has earned a Rockefeller Grant, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

His talk is sponsored by the Living Writers Cluster (a division of Cultural Studies). For more information contact Peter Gizzi at (408) 459-5261 or send e-mail to peter_gizzi@macmail.ucsc.edu

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