It’s the warmest day of winter and the tulips on my table are shedding their petals. They were a robust blush and now they have turned translucent. I’m having a hard time letting them go.

On a colder winter day, my most revered pen pal, Eric Paul, was in town for a reading at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop so I joined up with him in Cambridge.

In between readings, my eyes fell naturally on a few known authors stacked on the shelves, but after the event I asked Eric, “Who do I need to know?”

“You must have Robert Creeley.”

When it comes to literature, I would jump off the proverbial cliff if he asked me to.

Luckily, we were in Harvard Square and it was a shelf not a cliff.

So that’s the origin story of this book.

Being that I bought this collection at the beginning of Winter, I think it’s interesting to really sink into it only now at the end of winter. And the writing truly has this ‘budding’ effect. The words seem to come just out of the ground, or sky for a stream, a preview of consciousness. Not to be over done.

The poetry is both free and with form at the same time. It seems that critics argue over where his style officially fits but I never care for those sorts of conversations anyhow.

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Place to Be
Robert Creeley

Days the weather sits
in the endless sky,
the clouds drifting by.

The winter’s snow,
summer’s heat,
same street.

Nothing changes
but the faces, the people,
all the things they do

‘spite of heaven and hell
or city hall—
Nothing’s wiser than a moment.

No one’s chance
is simply changed by wishing,
right or wrong.

What you do is how you get along.
What you did is all it ever means.

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Robert Creeley, for when you’re ready to come out of “winter”.