Robert Creeley papers, 1950-1997

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Summary

Extent:
516 Linear Feet, 1 hard drive(s), 1 hard drive(s), 121 optical disc(s), 3 zip disk(s), 422 floppy disk(s) (3.5 inch), 4 computer, portable, and 3 computer, desktop
Language:
English
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item] , Robert Creeley Papers, M0662, Dept. of Special Collections, Stanford Libraries, Stanford, Calif.

Background

Scope and content:

The Robert Creeley Papers document the life work of a leading American poet of the 20th century, one of the core members of the "Black Mountain School." They also document several important movements in American poetics in the second half of the century. The papers include Creeley's personal and professional correspondence, journals, business records, personal mementos, clippings, artwork, and other documents generated and collected by him from 1950 to 1997.

Wherever Creeley's original arrangement of materials was encountered, his order has been respected. However, in certain instances when the papers arrived without any clear indication of Creeley's own intellectual organization for those papers, it was necessary to divine what we think is the most appropriate intellectual arrangement for the papers. Stanford University Libraries has essayed to organize the papers in the schema of earlier intellectual organizations, especially that established at Washington University, St. Louis, where many of these papers were previously stored. Too, where no clear provenance for individual documents can be determined, we have attempted to find an organizational schema which will be most useful for researchers and scholars.

The papers are divided into 18 series: 1. Correspondence; 2. Manuscripts by Creeley; 3. Manuscripts by others; 4. Business records; 5. Black Mountain Review / Divers Press Editor Files; 6. Academic records and teaching materials; 7. Interviews; 8. Announcements; 9. Memorabilia; 10.Photographs and Artwork; 11. Publications; 12. Audiovisual Materials; 13. Born-Digital materials; 14. Creeley Family Ephemera; 15. Oversize Materials; 16. Accession 2005-348: Photocopies of letters from Robert Duncan; 17. Accession 2011-036; 18. Correspondence and ephemera removed from books; 19. Accession 2009-027: Creeley Poetry Manuscript Notebooks.

Series 13, Born-Digital Materials (acquired in 2005 and 2011), consists of two sub-series: 2005-341 and 2011-036. This series contains a collection of email ranging from 1994-2005 that documents Creeley's life and work during that time.

Series 16, accession 2005-348, consists of one box of photocopies of correspondence.

The materials in Series 17, accession 2011-036, are divided into 16 subseries and consist of correspondence, manuscripts by Creeley, manuscripts by others, materials relating to various works written by Creeley, miscellaneous ephemera, photographs, printed matter, audiovisual materials and computer files.

Biographical / historical:
Date Event
1926
Robert White Creeley born in Arlington, Massachusetts, May 21 to Oscar Slate and Genevieve Jules Creeley
1928
Left eye injured in accident
1930
Father died. Family moves to West Acton
1940
Entered Holderness School
1943
Entered Harvard College
1944-1945
Served in the American Field Service in India and Burma
1945
Returned to Harvard
1946
First published poem. Married Ann MacKinnon.
1947
Left Harvard without a degree
1948
Son David born
1948-1951
Lived in Littleton, NH where he bred pigeons
1950
Son Thomas born. Began correspondence with Charles Olson. Became American editor for Ranier Gerhardt's Fragmente
1951
Lived outside Aix-en-Province, France
1952
Daughter Charlotte born. Published Le Fou, his first book of poems. Moved to Majorca to establish Divers Press
1953
The Kind of Act of [poems] The Immoral Proposition [poems]
1954
The Gold Diggers [short stories] Taught at Black Mountain College First issue of Black Mountain Review, edited by Creeley, published in March
1955
Divorced from Ann MacKinnon All that is lovely in men [poems]
1956
Left Black Mountain College. If you [poems] Visited San Francisco Moves to Albuquerque Receives B.A. from Black Mountain College
1957
Married Bobbie Hall The Whip [collection of poems] Daughter Sarah born
1959
Daughter Katherine Williams born Moved to Guatemala A Form of Women [poems]
1960
Received M.A. from University of New Mexico Received Levinson Prize Included in The New American Peotry : 1945-1960
1961
Instructor at University of New Mexico
1962
For Love : Poems 1950-1960 Instructor at University of British Columbia
1963
Moved to Placitas, NM Vancouver Poetry Festival The Island [novel]
1964
Received Guggenheim Fellowship Received Oscar Blumenthal Prize
1965
Berkeley Poetry Conference The Gold Diggers and other stories [short stories] Edited with Donald Allen New American Story Words [poems] Received Rockefeller Grant
1966
National Educational Television Film, "Poetry : Robert Creeley"
1966-1970
Visiting Professor at State University of New York, Buffalo
1967
Words [poems] Edited with Donald Allen The New Writing in the USA Colloborated with R.B. Kitaj on A Sight Robert Creeley Reads [recorded reading]
1967-present
Named Professor of English at SUNY, Buffalo
1968
Taught at University of New Mexico The Finger [poems] Numbers [poems]
1969
Pieces [poems] The Charm [poems]
1970
Moved to Bolinas, CA Taught at San Francisco State University A Quick Graph : Collected Notes & Essays [criticism]
1972
A Day Book [journal and poems] Listen [a radio play]
1973
Edited Whitman: Selected Poems Moved to Buffalo His Idea [poems]
1974
Thirty Things [poems]
1976
Presences : a text for Marisol [prose] Away [poems] Selected Poems Divorced Bobbie Hall Creeley
1977
Married Penelope Highton
1978
Boundary 2 published a double issue called Robert Creeley : A Gathering
1979
Later [poems]
1980
First volume of Charles Olson and Robert Creeley : The Complete Correspondence published by Black Sparrow Press
1981
Son William born Awarded Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America
1982
NEA Grant
1983
Daughter Hannah born Hello : a journal [poems] DAAD Fellowship in Berlin
1984
Appointed David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters, SUNY Buffalo
1985
Awarded Leone d'Oro Premio Speziale, Venice
1987
2nd DAAD Fellowship in Berlin Awarded Frost Medal by Poetry Society of America
1988
Robert Creeley's Life and Work published Received Distinguished Fulbright Award as Bicentennial Chair in American Studies, Helsinki University
1989-1991
New York State Poet
1990
Named Capen Professor of Poetry and Humanities, SUNY Buffalo
1991
Autobiography [essay]
1993
Tom Clark's Robert Creeley and the Genius of the American Common Place published Received Horst Bienek Lyrikpreis from Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts Tales out of School : Selected Interviews
1994
Echoes [poems]
1995
Loops : Ten Poems
2005
Robert White Creeley died in Odessa, Texas, on March 30th

Recognized as a seminal figure of American letters in the second half of the 20th century, Robert White Creeley was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, on May 21, 1926, attended the Holderness School and then Harvard College. He received degrees from The Black Mountain College (B.A., 1956) and the University of New Mexico (M.A., 1960).

After serving as an ambulance driver for the American Field Service in India and Burma, then living for a year outside Aix-en-Provence, France, Creeley moved in 1952 to Mallorca, where he founded and edited the Divers Press. Upon his return to the United States and at the invitation of Charles Olson, Creeley moved to North Carolina where he joined the faculty of the Black Mountain College and edited the short-lived but highly influential journal, The Black Mountain Review (1954 -1957). Though he left the college in 1955, Creeley had already established himself as one of the leading figures of the literary avant-garde of the 1950s, establishing with Charles Olson the "Black Mountain School,"one of the most important movements in American letters, the foundation of Projective Verse, a break from the New Criticism and its "insistence on form as extrensic to the poem. He is notable for having established a lasting association with his literary mentors-Pound, Williams, Zukofsky, Bunting, and Dahlberg, among others-as well as those poets, writers and visual artists associated with the experimental arts of Black Mountain and the 1950s avant-garde. Among these are Paul Blackburn, John Chamberlain, Francisco Clemente, Cid Corman, Fielding Dawson, Jim Dine, Elsa Dorfman, Ed Dorn, Robert Duncan, Robert Indiana, R.B. Kitaj, Denise Levertov, Marisol, and especially Charles Olson, with whom Creeley corresponded extensively and collaborated on Mayan Letters (1953). Creeley was also a presence in the San Francisco poetry renaissance, where he formed a life-long association with Barth, Corso, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and McClure. Creeley is currently the SUNY Distinguished Professor of English and holds the Samuel P. Capen Chair of Poetry and Humanities at the State University of New York, Buffalo, a center of innovation and postmodern poetics, particularly that or those of the so-called "L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E" poets.

While his oeuvre includes short stories, essays, a novel, as well as criticism, Creeley is known principally as a poet. His friend and fellow poet John Ashbery has said of Creeley and his work, "He is the best we have." He has published over thirty volumes of verse since 1952, including: Words (1967); Pieces (1969); St. Martin's (1971); A Day Book (1972); Thirty Things (1974); Presences : A Text for Marisol (1976); Away (1976); Echoes (1982); Mirrors (1983); Memory Gardens (1986); and Windows (1990). His most recent collections of poems are Echoes (1994), published by New Directions, and Loops (1995), published by Nadja. Among his collections of poems are: For Love : Poems, 1950-1960 (1962); Poems 1950-1965 (1966); The Charm (1971); The Finger : Poems 1966-1969 (1970); The Door : Selected Poems (1975); Selected Poems (1976); The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975 (1982); and Selected Poems 1945-1990 (1991).

Creeley has been awarded numerous literary prizes, including the Horst Bienek Lyrikpreis from the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Award, and a Rockefeller Grant. He was named New York State Poet Laureate in 1992. Creeley is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He lived with his wife, Penelope Highton Creeley, and two of his six children in Buffalo, New York.

Robert Creeley died on March 30, 2005 in Odessa, Texas.

Acquisition information:

Purchased, 1993, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2012.

Core collection was shipped to Stanford from Washington University, St. Louis and from Robert Creeley's home via George Minkoff.

Processing information:

Processed by Stephan J. Potchatek, Polly Armstrong, and Special Collections staff; Accession 2011-036 processed by Diana Kohnke.

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

The collection is open for research except that all medical records for Robert Creeley and his family have been restricted, as have student recommendations and certain financial documents. Audiovisual and born-digital materials must be reformatted before use. Some addenda to the collection are closed until processed, including Accessions 1993-114, 2001-143, 2005-073, 2005-319, and 2007-082.

The email contained in the collection is available in the Field Reading Room; correspondents and extracted entities (personal and corporate names and locations) from Barlow's email have been published in Stanford's ePADD Discovery Module at: http://epadd.stanford.edu/epadd/collections. The remaining digital portion of the collection is closed until processing is complete.

Terms of access:

While Special Collections is the owner of the physical and digital items, permission to examine collection materials is not an authorization to publish. These materials are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study. Any transmission or reproduction beyond that allowed by fair use requires permission from the owners of rights, heir(s) or assigns.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item] , Robert Creeley Papers, M0662, Dept. of Special Collections, Stanford Libraries, Stanford, Calif.

Location of this collection:
Department of Special Collections, Green Library
557 Escondido Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-6004, US
Contact:
(650) 725-1022
specialcollections@stanford.edu
Website