Poetry
For Love: Poems 1950-1960
Robert Creeley · 1962
Synopsis
Short poems written from 1950 to 1960, from the opening piece addressed to Hart Crane to “For Love”, which closes the book and is addressed to Bobbie, his wife. In “I Know a Man”, a man who talks incessantly tells a friend, whom he calls John though that is not his name, that darkness surrounds them, and proposes buying a big car; the friend shouts at him to look at the road. The very short lines break on pauses, so that one hears someone searching for words. The subject is almost always love, and the difficulty of saying it.
Context
The volume brings together ten years of poems that its author had put out in small editions, three of them published only in Europe, and was published in New York by Scribner in 1962: it was his first recognition. The critic Albert Mobilio sees in it a decisive contribution to the poetry of rupture that was then renewing the American tradition. The collection was translated into French by Michel Murat in 2025, under the title Par amour.
Who it is for
Very short poems, to be read slowly: the line breaks make the meaning as much as the words do. Translated into French in 2025.
Prizes and reception
A finalist for the 1963 National Book Award, the book that established its author after ten years of small presses.
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