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Momently the politics of the poem, a note on robert Creeley i can no more avoid political concerns than i can avoid the fact that it’s raining outside. —robert Creeley, 1965 in February 1962 robert Creeley gave a landmark reading in Vancouver. it consisted largely of poems from For Love, published two months later in april.the audience had in its number the students in Warren tallman’s yearlong undergraduate course Approaches to Poetry, which in its second semester focussed largely on don allen’s anthology The New American Poetry 1945– 1960. the reception Creeley got was completely beyond his experience, the audience listened with such close attention, spell-bound and appreciative. He told Fred Wah, who later became a friend, and who was there, that it was a terrific boost to his confidence at a time when he was particularly unsure of himself.1 in september 1962 robert Creeley and i both started teaching at the University of British Columbia, me with a renewable tenure-track appointment as assistant professor, him with a one-year appointment at the lowly rank of lecturer. He got that job perhaps partly as a result of that reading, and certainly as a result of Warren tallman’s unceasing efforts on his behalf in an english department largely devoted to the traditional canon. Basically, he was hired to teach english composition to first-year students in a course whose syllabus was fixed and inflexible—and to do so for a pretty low wage (i was paid almost twice as much as him).But he was given an undergraduate creative writing course in poetry for upper division students—perhaps because For Love had recently been published and The Island was forthcoming.2 strongly devoted to hierarchy and its trappings of power,the english department was not an especially friendly place,and Creeley himself was somewhat sidelined by the intense politicking as his new colleagues teaching creative writing struggled to break away from a department firmly ruled by an unsympathetic head and senior committee who held office for life. that was a battle which could not, in the very nature of things, concern Creeley, any politics of the poem 175 more than Creeley’s personal welfare could concern the powers running the english department. Creeley’s year in Vancouver was by no means miserable, but it certainly could have been better. Warren and ellen tallman were an important lifeline , and Creeley’s poetry-writing course was a life-saver, the students were so amazingly committed. i asked Fred Wah Who took it? and he said “We all did”; that would mean, among others, the whole Tish group: George Bowering , Frank davey, Gladys Hindmarch, Lionel Kearns, daphne Marlatt, and Fred Wah, all of whom have since gained considerable reputations as writers . daphne Marlatt told me Creeley’s course, focusing on how to question, how to think, how to pay attention, was “very much an eye-opening experience , an ear-opening experience,”3 it had a profound effect upon her life as a writer. When Creeley left Vancouver at the end of the school year, to take up a teaching post at the University of new Mexico, Fred Wah followed, to work on an M.a.; he was Creeley’s teaching assistant there. during his year in Vancouver, Creeley was instrumental and indispensable in the organization of the Vancouver poetry Conference, held in the summer of 1963—a credit course arranged by Creeley and Warren tallman through the University ’s extra-sessional studies department. in addition to Creeley, the faculty included robert duncan, allen Ginsberg, denise Levertov, and Charles olson. that Creeley had an influence on Canadian writing—and especially poetry—is beyond question; it also looks as though his Canadian experience had its effect upon him, and for the rest of his life he maintained constant contact with writers and writing in Vancouver through correspondence, readings , and fairly regular visits. He had many Canadian friends. For Creeley, that year in Vancouver was marked by a sharp division between the public and the personal: he held a place in an institution totally indifferent to his personal identity as an individual and essentially indifferent to or suspicious of his writing. institutionally, outside his course in writing poetry he could find no Common place—as he says of the american president : “it isn’t that i can’t be in the same room with him, but i can’t find a place to be the way that he presumes...

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