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023 Kleinzahlen, August.  "What Is Left Out," Rev. of Selected Poems, 1945-2005 by Robert Creeley.  New York Times Book Review, February 24, 2008, p. 19.

Kleinzahlen calls Creeley (1926-2005) one of the best poets of his generation and also one of the darkest.  The darkness is a "severity of outlook" that underpins the work of Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost as well.  His best work came early in his career, maturing in his mid-thirties.  For Love sold 40,000 copies.  Many of these poems seem "small, stripped-down affairs, as bare-boned as Beckett."  In these "highly tensile constructions" the voice is halting and nervy, agitated and distressed.  Among the influences on Creeley the most prominent seems to have been William Carlos Williams, clearly evident in the weight both placed on line enjambment.  Both poets were fascinated by the cadences of American speech, both avoided similes and metaphors, both abhored adjectives.  Creeley, however, employed rhyme, but rhyme appearing at unpredictable intervals as a form of emphasis.  In summary, he has no equal among modern love poets, Kleinzahlen says, and this collection is a "brilliant, essential volume."

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