I Know a Man

I didn't know that we had lost him; this summer, that had so late a season, we lost Robert Creeley, the Black Mountain Poet, mentor of my creative writing advisor, and Great Gray Sage of the Postmodern era. He died at 78, out in the arty areas of the Midwest, while on some junket or the other. One-eyed from youth, Creeley, pictured at left in art livre, winked at a world he found a curious, dangerous, wonderful, awful place. He wrote one of my favorite poems:

I Know a Man

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, -- John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.


He goes remembered.