NOTES

The notes that follow are not exhaustive. They are designed to clarify some of the countless obscurities that arise across these six decades of correspondence. We tend to privilege allusions that cannot be readily identified with an Internet search engine: small press ephemera (the print archive that remains undigitized because of post-1923 copyright laws), proper names (occasionally, the crowding of Jacks and Bobs can be difficult to keep straight), and Creeley’s idiosyncratic shorthand (e.g., “Chas” refers to Charles Olson).

For works by Creeley, we generally cite the first periodical or book publication, except when he circulates a draft that remains unpublished at the time of the letter. Bracketed citations refer to later collected editions or archived papers according to the abbreviations below.

The compilation of these notes was aided by Mary Novik’s Robert Creeley: An Inventory, 1945–1970 (Kent State University Press/McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1973) and In Company: Robert Creeley’s Collaborations, ed. Amy Cappellazzo and Elizabeth Licata (Castellani Art Museum/Weatherspoon Art Gallery, 1999).

CP I	The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945–1975 (University of California Press, 1982)
CP II	The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1975–2005 (University of California Press, 2006)
CE	The Collected Essays of Robert Creeley (University of California Press, 1989)
Stanford M0662	Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California. Refers to the Robert Creeley Papers (M0662), unless otherwise indicated.
GB	Charles Olson and Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence, ed. George F. Butterick (vols. 1–8) and Richard Blevins (vols. 9–10) (Black Sparrow Press, 1980–96)

LETTER TO GENEVIEVE AND HELEN CREELEY 5/10/45: “Furioso”: Poetry magazine from New Haven (1939–43 and 1946–53). Genevieve is RC’s mother, and Helen, his sister.

LETTER TO BOB LEED 6/21/48: “the last letter before I see you”: Jacob “Bob” Leed, college friend and collaborator on RC’s planned little magazine the Lititz Review. See Jacob Leed, “Robert Creeley and The Lititz Review: A Recollection with Letters,” Journal of Modern Literature 5, no. 2 (April 1976): 243–59.

“I can’t tell you how many fights (actual) I’ve had with Ann”: RC’s first wife, Ann MacKinnon.

“reading several other books at the same time”: Books cited include Susanne K. Langer’s Philosophy in a New Key (Harvard University Press, 1942), Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Psychology of the Imagination (Philosophical Library, 1948), William Carlos Williams’s Paterson, Book Two (New Directions, 1948), Richard Wilbur’s The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems (Harcourt, Brace, 1947), T. S. Eliot: A Selected Critique, ed. Leonard Unger (Rinehart, 1948), and André Gide, Journals of André Gide, vol. 2: 1914–1927 (Knopf, 1948).

LETTER TO BOB LEED [CA. AUGUST 1948]: “a brief, subversive member of the Advocate”: Campus literary magazine the Harvard Advocate. RC also served on the editorial staff of the Wake (also known as the Harvard Wake) for a special issue on e. e. cummings; see Wake 5 (Spring 1946).

“that New Directions selection”: Herman Melville, Selected Poems, ed. F. O. Matthiessen (New Directions, 1944).

“I would strongly suggest that you read this article”: Hannah Arendt, “The Concentration Camps,” Partisan Review 15, no. 6 (July 1948): 743–63.

“if you’ll read Sorokin”: Pitirim Sorokin, the Russian-American founder of Harvard’s Sociology Department.

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 2/11/50: “I’d like to ask you for your help with respect to a magazine”: the Lititz Review, to be edited by RC and printed by Jacob Leed.

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 2/27/50: “Very, very glad to have your letter”: In response to a letter from Williams, dated 2/23/50, that ends, “I’m pretty well sunk with work, medical and literary, but I hope I’ll never be so sunk that I can’t help a guy with a piece of some sort if I think he’s got the stuff. But I’m absolutely washed up for time right now.” [Stanford M0662].

“Prof. Levin’s progress”: Harry Levin, Harvard professor and literary critic.

“PR”: Partisan Review, dismissed by Williams in his letter, “has chronic constipation and no direction other than rearward view.”

LETTER TO LARRY EIGNER [CA. FEBRUARY 1950]: “Horace Gregory”: Poet, translator, and critic.

“One had a lovely face”: W. B. Yeats, “Memory,” The Wild Swans at Coole, 1919.

“About Basic”: Basic English, a simplified system of writing with an English vocabulary of 850 words, based on various rules governing word order. Two main proponents of Basic English were C. K. Ogden (1889–1957) and I. A. Richards (1893–1979). Cf. Richards’s Basic English and Its Uses (W. W. Norton, 1943). RC and Leed discussed asking contributors of prose essays to the Lititz Review to write them in Basic English.

“When I read on Cid’s program”: Cid Corman’s radio show This Is Poetry, on WMEX in Boston.

“letter from William Carlos Williams”: Williams’s letter to RC, 2/23/50.

LETTER TO EZRA POUND 4/14/50: “a letter from Mr. Horton”: T. D. Horton letter dated “28 Marck [sic] 1950” [Stanford M0662].

“a confusion about Del Mar”: Alexander del Mar, late nineteenth-century monetary historian. Horton suggests in a letter, 5/2/50, that RC change the name of the Lititz Review to the Del Mar Quarterly.

“his note on Eliot”: Williams, “With Forced Fingers Rude,” Four Pages 2 (February 1948): 1–4.

“Simpson”: Dallam Simpson, Pound affiliate, editor of Four Pages, and founder of Cleaners Press. See Alexander Del Mar, A History of Monetary Crimes (Cleaners Press, 1951).

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 4/15/50: “your letter”: letter from Williams, dated 4/13/50.

“what makes false history”: See Pound’s letter to RC, dated 4/24/50: “It is really quite simple. 2 questions : 1. Do you resent the falsification of history? 2. Do you want any contributors who do NOT resent the falsification of history?” [Stanford M0662].

“your own comment”: Williams, “Letter to an Australian Editor,” Briarcliff Quarterly 3, no. 2 (October 1946): 204–9.

LETTER TO CID CORMAN [4/23/50]: “CRISIS & GRYPHON”: Gryphon magazine, edited by Richard Rubenstein from San Francisco and later St. Louis. See RC, “Poem for Bob Leed,” Gryphon 2 (Fall 1950): 18. The Crisis, the political and literary journal of the NAACP founded by W. E. B. Du Bois in 1910. Du Bois was replaced by Roy Wilkins in 1934.

“[William] Phillips & [Philip] Rahv”: editors of the Partisan Review.

“Ransom’s method”: Refers to the Kenyon Review 7, no. 1 (Winter 1945): John Crowe Ransom, “The Severity of Mr. Savage” (114–17); and D. S. Savage, “The Aestheticism of W. B. Yeats” (118–34).

“Emerson”: Richard W. Emerson, editor of Golden Goose magazine (Columbus, OH, 1948–49, 1951–54).

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 4/24/50: “Thanks for the push with Olson”: Williams had recommended that Olson contact RC.

“what I find in the copy of X&Y”: Charles Olson, Y&X (Black Sun Press, 1949).

“T. D. Horton . . . Donald Paquette”: Poets recommended to RC by Pound.

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 4/24/50: “Olsen”: In this first extant letter by RC to Olson, he misspells Olson’s last name.

“So will print”: RC refers to Olson’s poems submitted for the Lititz Review, including “The Morning News,” Origin 10 (Summer 1953): 122–28; and “Move Over,” Golden Goose 3, no. 1 (1951): 41.

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 4/28/50: “Crews”: Judson Crews, poet and owner of Motive Bookshop (Texas).

“For the note”: Olson, “La Préface,” “The Green Man,” and “The Moebius Strip,” from Charles Olson, Y&X, drawings by Carrado Cagli (Black Sun Press, 1948).

“Thinking of Stevens”: Wallace Stevens, “The State of American Writing, 1948: A Symposium,” Partisan Review 15, no. 8 (August 1948): 885. Stevens’s response is to a question that begins, “It is the general opinion that, unlike the twenties, this is not a period of experiment in language and form. If that is true, what significance can be attached to that fact?”

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 6/5/50: “Blood from a stone”: Likely refers to payment for publication of RC’s story “The Unsuccessful Husband,” Kenyon Review 13, no. 1 (Winter 1951): 64–71.

“I see I misread you”: According to George Butterick, the allusion is to a lost letter from Olson. [GB, vol. 1, n81].

“that form is never more than an extension of content”: This is the first occurrence of the now famous formulation that Olson makes use of in his “Projective Verse” essay.

“I had read once with delight”: Likely refers to Remy de Gourmont, The Natural Philosophy of Love, trans. with postscript by Ezra Pound (Boni and Liveright, 1922).

“Opener in PG’s”: Paul Goodman, The Dead of Spring (Libertarian Press, 1950), 11.

“Vol. 2—Del Mar”: See letter to Ezra Pound 4/14/50.

“Was thinking if, perhaps”: According to George Butterick, the allusion is to Australian novelist Jakob Wasserman’s The World’s Illusion (1920). [GB, vol. 1, n86].

“to what the Dr. called”: William Carlos Williams, Paterson, Book One (New Directions, 1946), n.p.

“Bud had written”: RC’s college friend Buddy (Donald) Berlin. He served with RC on the editorial board for the e. e. cummings issue of Wake 5 (Spring 1946). See also letter to Bob Leed [ca. August 1948] and letter to Charles Olson 10/18/50.

“comment abt the possible ‘reason’”: Ezra Pound, “Papyrus,” from Personae: The Collected Poems of Ezra Pound (New Directions, 1926), 112.

“yes: abt Francis Thompson”: Francis J. Thompson, “Courageous, Not Outrageous,” review of New Directions in Prose and Poetry 11 (1949), in Hopkins Review 3, no. 4 (Summer 1950): 42–44.

LETTER TO DOROTHY POUND 6/15/50: “Dear Mrs. Pound”: A condition of Pound’s confinement at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital (DC) was that he was not to engage in outside correspondence. See RC, “A Note followed by a Selection of Letters from Ezra Pound,” Agenda 4, no. 2 (October–November, 1965): 11–21.

“one Uncle Dudley”: Long-time editorial pseudonym at the Boston Globe.

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 6/21/50: “Never a man worked more deliberately”: See André Gide, The Counterfeiters (Knopf, 1927); and the “Isabel” section of André Gide, Two Symphonies (Knopf, 1931).

“about conte & possible: novel”: Conte, from the Old French conter, to relate, recount. Modern usage generally refers to a short story or novella.

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON [10/18/50]: “Yr letters here”: Butterick reports that Olson’s letters to RC from 7/31/50 until the end of the year were lost in RC’s move to France. [GB, vol. 1, xii].

“Or 1/we are editors with him”: RC and Olson are thanked for “advice” in a prefatory note to Origin 1 (Spring 1951), but Cid Corman is identified as the sole editor.

“tells me Kitasono is old hash”: Katue (Katsue) Kitasono edited Vou magazine (Japan). RC publications in the magazine include “Divisions” (poem), Vou 37 (1953): 12; “The Trap” (poem), Vou 40 (March 1954): 22; and “Note on Poetry” (prose), Vou 44 (November 1954): 16. Kitasono designed the covers of Black Mountain Review 1–4.

“Now the thing I wd figure, to, say, let GATE & CENTER stand as prose”: Charles Olson, “The Gate & The Center,” Origin 1 (Spring 1951): 35–41.

“I think such a section, the letters”: Charles Olson, “Letters to Vincent Ferrini,” Origin 1 (Spring 1951): 5–6, 42, 53–54, 61.

“Emerson, he’d sent on the book”: Richard Emerson, The Greengrocer’s Son (Alan Swallow, 1950).

“What I flopped trying to write”: RC’s short story “Mr. Blue” was published the following year. See letter to Denise Levertov and Mitch Goodman 4/18/51 and letter to William Carlos Williams 9/27/51.

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON [11/9/50]: “Lieber Herr Olson: zuerst mochte ich . . .”: George Butterick appends RC’s translation of letter by German poet and editor Rainer Gerhardt, the beginning of which reads, “First I’d like to thank you for yr fine letter, which we were glad to get.” [GB, vol. 4, 13].

“he takes it back wall is Perse/front Pound”: Saint-John Perse (1887–1975), winner of Nobel Prize in 1960.

“On Kitasono”: Katue Kitasono. See letter to Charles Olson 10/18/50.

LETTER TO PAUL BLACKBURN [11/29/50]: “Very good to have yr letter”: There are no extant letters from Paul Blackburn before June 17, 1951.

“G. S. Fraser in opening”: G. S. Fraser, “Mannerist Poem,” Nine 2, no. 2 (January 1950): 30–32.

“The Olson poem”: Charles Olson, “In Cold Hell, In Thicket,” Golden Goose 3, no. 1 (1951): 34–40. In a letter dated 9/25/50, RC had written, “Dear Blackburn, Hate to have rushed you, or whatever. Just got a letter from Olson, that Emerson lost revised copy of the IN COLD HELL, etc. and O/ has none, so you, as it happens have the only one, which was mine. Anyhow, wd be very grateful if you’d rush it to: Emerson, the address given on the telegram. . . .”

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON [12/7/50]: “a note he had written on Ez”: William Carlos Williams, “Letter to an Australian Editor,” Briarcliffe Quarterly 11 (October 1946): 205–8.

“Bill/ in Rasles gig”: William Carlos Williams, “Père Sebastian Rasles,” from In the American Grain (Albert & Charles Boni, 1925): 105–29.

“that biz in the Plumed Serpent”: D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent (Quetzalcoatl) (Martin Secker, 1926).

LETTER TO MITCH GOODMAN [1951]: “To say a bit abt the Olson biz”: See Olson, “Introduction to Robert Creeley,” New Directions Annual 13 (1951): 92–93.

“PR”: Partisan Review.

“I don’t have a copy of”: Refers to William Carlos Williams’s White Mule (New Directions, 1937); In the American Grain (Albert & Charles Boni, 1925); and A Dream of Love (New Directions, 1948).

“A drab America, with or without”: Uncollected poem by Larry Eigner.

LETTER TO DENISE LEVERTOV AND MITCH GOODMAN 4/18/51: “Perched on a bristly grass”: Uncollected Levertov poem. [Denise Levertov Papers, Stanford M0601, series 2, box 1, folder 65].

“one with the door, & fire”: Unidentified poem.

“another issue of that there WINDOW”: London poetry magazine (1950–56), edited by John Sankey. Published RC and Olson in the third issue (poems that had previously appeared in U.S. magazines) and Martin Seymour-Smith’s “La Foradada” and “All Devils Fading” in The Window 4 (February 1952): 2–4.

“2nd issue of GOAD”: See letter to Horace Schwartz [1951] below.

“Rexroth’s damn long thing”: Kenneth Rexroth, “The Dragon and the Unicorn, part II,” New Directions Annual 13 (1951): 370–453. Olson’s “Introduction to Robert Creeley” and RC’s “Mr. Blue and Other Stories” appear in the same issue (92–93, 94–116).

“Read Kenner’s damn bk/”: Hugh Kenner, The Poetry of Ezra Pound (New Directions, 1951).

“Henry Green”: British-born writer who wrote his many novels in French.

LETTER TO DENISE LEVERTOV 4/22/51: “Then see it! in distressing”: “The Last Turn,” from William Carlos Williams, The Collected Later Poems of William Carlos Williams (New Directions, 1950), 44.

“The blossoms of the apricot”: Ezra Pound, “Canto XIII,” from The Cantos of Ezra Pound (New Directions, 1948), 60.

“Will bring the Olson bklet”: Charles Olson, Y&X, drawings by Carrado Cagli (Black Sun, 1948).

“Also, a copy of ORIGIN”: Cid Corman’s magazine Origin 1 (Spring 1951), featuring poems by Olson and including RC’s “Hart Crane” (57).

“Figure Bereaved”: Levertov, “The Bereaved,” first published in Origin 2 (Summer 1951): 83.

LETTER TO PAUL BLACKBURN 5/23/51: “the Levy”: Standard reference work, Dictionnaire de Provençal. Blackburn was already well into his lifelong project of translating the Old Provençal poets.

“the Sordello edition”: Thirteenth-century Provençal poet.

“G/s 1st issue”: Rainer M. Gerhardt’s magazine Fragmente no. 1 (1951).

“The SUMMER one: very cool”: Blackburn’s poem, “Death and the Summer Woman” was published in the RC issue of Origin 2 (Summer 1951): 81. It was later collected in Blackburn’s The Dissolving Fabric (Divers Press, 1953), n.p.

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 6/29/51: “news from Laughlin”: James Laughlin, publisher of New Directions books and the New Directions Annual. See also note for Letter to Denise Levertov and Mitch Goodman 4/18/51.

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 8/1/51: “A copy of PATERSON IV”: William Carlos Williams, Paterson, Book Four (New Directions, 1951).

“The sea part, the opening of ‘III’”: The first section of Paterson (Book Four) is titled “The Run to the Sea.” The third section begins, “Haven’t you forgot your virgin purpose, / the language?”

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 9/27/51: “comments on the work in ORIGIN”: Williams in his letter of 9/8/51 had written, “I see—saw—your stuff in Kirgo’s—no—ORIGIN, Summer issue and liked it, especially the prose. Keep up the good work.” [Stanford M0662]. See the special issue on RC in Origin 2 (Summer 1951); RC’s “prose” includes stories (“In the Summer,” “3 Fate Tales,” and “Mr. Blue”), an essay (“Notes for a New Prose”), and excerpts from four letters to Cid Corman.

LETTER TO DENISE LEVERTOV 10/3/51: “Aldington”: Richard Aldington (1892–1962), modernist poet affiliated with Imagism.

“Ashley”: Ashley Bryan, painter. Designed cover of Origin 5 (Spring 1952).

“hate to move Dave again”: RC’s son David Creeley (b. 1947).

“Emerson writes he could put out a small booklet of my poems”: Emerson published RC’s Le Fou (Golden Goose Press, 1952).

“Perched on bristly grass, a shaved steep slope”: Unpublished Levertov poem. [Denise Levertov Papers, Stanford M0601, series 2, box 1, folder 65.]

“Check Olson’s comments on description in PNY piece”: Charles Olson’s manifesto “Projective Verse,” published originally as “Projective Verse vs. The Non-Projective,” Poetry New York 3 (1950): 13–22.

LETTER TO MITCH GOODMAN 10/3/51: “Getting the letter off to Denny”: See letter to Levertov 10/3/51.

“Buddy”: Buddy (Donald) Berlin. See letter to Olson 6/5/50.

“Olson’s laws, etc. . . . those three main dicta . . .”: This likely refers to section I of Olson’s “Projective Verse.” The “laws” would be “(1) kinetics . . . A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it (he will have some several causations), by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to, the reader.” “(2) is the principle, i.e. . . . the reason why a projective poem can come into being. It is this: FORM IS NEVER MORE THAN AN EXTENSION OF CONTENT. (Or so it got phrased by one, R. Creeley. . . . )” “(3) the process of the thing . . . ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION.”

LETTER TO HORACE SCHWARTZ [LATE 1951]: “Dear Schwartz”: First published as “Letter from Robert Creeley,” Goad 2 (Winter 1951–52): 16–19. Republished as “A Letter to the Editor of Goad,” in RC, A Quick Graph, ed. Donald Allen (Four Seasons, 1970), 92–94. RC responds to comments on Pound in Horace Schwartz, “A Note on the Famous Controversy,” Goad 1 (Summer 1951): 16. See also the follow-up response to RC by Leslie Woolf Hedley, “Letter to the Editor,” Goad 3 (Summer 1952): 7–9.

“There died a myriad . . .”: Ezra Pound, from Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (Ovid Press, 1920).

LETTER TO LARRY EIGNER [UNDATED, 1951]: “I have travelled much in Concord”: Thoreau, Walden. The original line reads, “I have travelled a good deal in Concord.”

“copy of POETRY NY”: See Olson, “Projective Verse.”

LETTER TO RENÉ LAUBIÈS [5/25/1952]:_ “in the note”: RC’s note on Laubiès, “Divers Sentiments,” for the Galerie Fachetti in 1953 or 1954. [CE, 377–78].

“character of the one for 3rd part”: Refers to RC stories published in The Gold Diggers (Divers Press, 1954), including “3 Fate Tales” (39–52). “In the Summer” (77–88) and “The Party” (53–62) are two other stories from the same collection.

“record of Casals”: Refers to Catalonian cellist Pablo Casals (1876–1973).

LETTER TO PAUL BLACKBURN 6/22/52: “Yours in, and that poem is real, real cool”: Blackburn’s letter to RC, dated 6/17/52, no longer includes the poem.

“our boy SS/”: Martin Seymour-Smith, English writer living on Majorca.

“HUDSON biz”: See C. R. Busby and Paul Blackburn, “Communications,” Hudson Review 5, no. 2 (Summer 1952): 317–20. Busby criticizes Blackburn’s Provençal translations in the prior issue as “none too accurate and dubiously felicitous.” In a long response, Blackburn defends his choices for “bringing these over into a modern English poem.”

“Lash”: Kenneth Lash, editor of the New Mexico Quarterly.

“I forgot to say G/ is still hunting down that Levy”: Rainer Gerhardt; see letter to Paul Blackburn 5/23/51.

“The church is a bizness, and the rich . . .”: Published in RC, “After Lorca,” Goad 3 (Summer 1952): 22. Republished in RC, The Kind of Act Of (Divers Press, 1953): n.p. [CP I, 121].

“Pierre Boulez, on ‘series’”: Quoted in Olson letter to Creeley, dated 6/15/1952. [GB, vol. 10, 153].

“article by Elath?”: M. Elath, “In Another Direction: Commentary and Review of Three Anthologies,” Intro 1, nos. 3–4 (1951): 112–36. A selection of William Hull’s poems appears in the next issue.

“THE DRUMS”: RC, “The Drums,” Golden Goose 4, no. 5 (October 1952): 23. Published also in Le Fou. [CP I, 29].

“E/ asked for a photograph, and fuck that, so I twisted my boy Ashley’s arm”: Refers to Emerson’s plan to publish RC’s Le Fou. Ashley Bryan’s ink portrait of RC appears on the title page. See letter to Denise Levertov 10/3/51.

“THE RHYME”: RC, “The Rhyme,” Golden Goose 4, no. 5 (October 1952): 25. Published also in Le Fou. [CP I, 117].

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 6/27/52: “the 2nd issue of FRAGMENTE”: RC appears in Fragmente 2 (1952) with two prose selections translated by Gerhardt: “Die Geisterrunde” (40–41) and “Der Liebhaber” (54–60). The issue also includes Williams’s “Die Rote Kirche” (trans. Gerhardt, 60–64).

“an article by M. Elath”: See letter to Paul Blackburn, 6/22/52.

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 7/15/52: “Poem is very cool”: Olson’s “Idle Idyll,” unpublished at the time. Collected in A Nation of Nothing But Poetry: Supplementary Poems, ed. George Butterick (Black Sparrow, 1989): 91–92.

“yesterday walking along the Cour Mirabeau”: Main avenue of Aix-en-Provence.

LETTER TO ROBERT DUNCAN 7/19/52: “an Englishman”: Martin Seymour-Smith, writer and editor. He and RC became friends when they both lived on Majorca.

“I know your work from . . .”: Origin 6 (summer 1952) is a special issue on Duncan and Williams. Duncan poems include “Africa Revisited” (80–86) and “Song of the Borderguard” (122–23).

LETTER TO PAUL BLACKBURN 1/9/53: “We got your Xmas card ok”: Card postmarked 12/22/52.

“the cover for your book”: Blackburn, Proensa: From the Provençal of Guillem de Peitau, Arnaut de Marueill, Raimbautz de Vaqueiras, Sordello, Bernart de Ventadorn, Peire Vidal, Bertran de Born (Divers Press, 1953).

“Olson’s book”: Designed by RC’s Divers Press, published as In Cold Hell, In Thicket (Origin, 1953).

“A-POSY, FOR RAINER GERHARDT, [etc.]”: Neither of these poems appears in the book.

“THE CROW”: RC, “The Crow,” Origin 9 (Spring 1953): 33. Republished in RC, The Kind of Act Of. [CP I, 124].

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 4/8/53: “Re the poem to hand”: Charles Olson, “The Mast.” First published in Olson, The Collected Poems of Charles Olson, ed. George Butterick (University of California Press, 1987): 286–89.

“Liquor and love”: William Carlos Williams, “The World Narrowed to a Point,” The Wedge (Cummington Press, 1944), 37.

“If I / could count the silence”: Williams, “Song,” The Pink Church (Golden Goose Press, 1949), n.p.

“And the too strong grasping of it”: From Charles Olson, “The Kingfishers,” In Cold Hell, In Thicket (Origin, 1953), which RC designed earlier in the year.

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 7/19/53: “Your two damn beautiful letters”: Two very long Olson letters to RC dated 7/14/53 and 7/17/53.

“. . . The unsure // egoist is not”: Published in RC, “The Immoral Proposition,” Origin 10 (Summer 1953): 80. Republished in RC, The Immoral Proposition (Jonathan Williams/ Jargon, 1953). [CP I, 125]. See also letter to Paul Blackburn 10/15/53.

LETTER TO PAUL BLACKBURN 9/17/53: “Don’t flip re book shipment”: RC published Blackburn’s Proensa in June 1953.

“re yr having enough for a book”: Likely refers to Blackburn’s The Dissolving Fabric (Divers Press, 1955).

LETTER TO JONATHAN WILLIAMS 9/23/53: “about the photographs”: Likely the photographs taken in Majorca by Jonathan Williams; see the cover of this collection, as well as the Collected Poems of Robert Creeley: 1945–1975 (University of California Press, 2006).

LETTER TO PAUL BLACKBURN 10/15/53: “those two poems you note”: One poem is RC, “The Drums” (see letter to Paul Blackburn 6/22/52). The second is RC, “The Pedigree,” Golden Goose 4, no. 6 (September 1953): 45. Republished in The Kind of Act Of. [CP I, 51].

“this coming booklet with Laubiès”: RC, The Immoral Proposition (Jonathan Williams/Jargon, 1953) with drawings by René Laubiès. Published in Karlsruhe-Durlach, Germany.

“THE OPERATION”: RC, “The Operation,” Origin 10 (Summer 1953): 79. Republished in The Immoral Proposition. [CP I, 128].

“THE RIDDLE”: RC, “The Riddle,” Golden Goose 4, no. 5 (October 1952): 27. Published also in Le Fou. [CP I, 115].

“whether or not Trocchi will print it”: RC was on the editorial board for the final issue of Alexander Trocchi’s magazine Merlin 2, no. 4 (Spring 1955). A note in the magazine announces plans to publish fiction by RC in a forthcoming issue.

LETTER TO DENISE LEVERTOV 2/3/54: “L/s (in Paris) inks goof me very much”: René Laubiès collaborated with RC on The Immoral Proposition (Jonathan Williams/Jargon, 1953); Laubiès’s “Eight Reproductions” appeared in Black Mountain Review 1, no. 1 (Spring 1954): 25–32.

“Mag// ok thank god. #1 is now in proof . . .”: Black Mountain Review 1, no. 1 (Spring 1954).

“Very good you liked the poem—thanks for taking it.”: See RC’s “The Warning” in Origin 13 (Summer 1954): 9. Levertov was guest editor for the issue.

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 6/6/54: “copy of the magazine” : First issue of the Black Mountain Review.

LETTER TO KENNETH REXROTH 8/14/54: “the review on Roethke plus the Patchen review”: Martin Seymour-Smith’s “Where Is Mr. Roethke?” and RC’s review of Kenneth Patchen’s Fables and Other Little Tales in Black Mountain Review 1, no. 1 (Spring 1954): 40–46, 63–64.

LETTER TO KENNETH REXROTH 8/19/54: “letter of yesterday can serve”: In a letter to Rexroth dated 8/18/54, RC defended the Patchen and Roethke reviews against Rexroth’s charge that they amounted to personal attacks: “I don’t think the review is unfair. Its comment attacks Roethke and his reviews equally, and I think the responsibility is a joint one. Poems are given and commented on, no matter how ‘truculently’, and to attack the reviewer means to attack his comments on these poems—in short, either to defend the poems with specific criticism of one’s own, or to abridge the readings offered or to do at least something of this kind. Because the review does deal with specific poems, and with various allegations concerning them and others, I don’t see how one can avoid dealing with said poems. Which is the obvious point, at least. That Roethke is a ‘sick’ man does not seem to me a defense of these poems, nor a defense of the positions that they should not be so written about. Because how can it be? To say that is to say equally that Pound’s Pisan Cantos are not to be so talked about, since they were written by a certified ‘sick’ man. In any case, much more interesting is the use to which this ‘sickness’ can be put, both by Roethke (who in this sense, personally, can certainly be excused as a man if not as a poet) and the criticism which sustains the reputation of his work. And that is what was, I believe, attacked, literally attacked.”

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 8/21/54: “about Gerhardt”: Rainer Gerhardt’s suicide.

“of the stories”: RC, The Gold Diggers (Divers Press, 1954).

“also very good to hear what you say of Olson’s”: Charles Olson, The Maximus Poems: 1–10 (Jonathan Williams, 1953). W. C. Williams received a copy of Olson’s book from Jonathan Williams, along with a request to write a review of it, as he mentions in his letter of 8/9/54. He says of the book, “It’s by far his best work” [Stanford M0662].

“I’m fighting after a fashion”: See letters to Rexroth, dated 8/14/54 and 8/19/54.

LETTER TO LOUIS ZUKOFSKY 11/10/54: “I had just seen your address”: Zukofsky’s name is spelled “Zukowsky” in the “Supplementary Distribution List” of The Pound Newsletter 4 (October 1954): 18. RC spells it “Zukovsky” in this letter.

“I have known your work from”: See Zukofsky poems, including “Poem Beginning ‘The’” and excerpts from “A,” in Active Anthology, ed. Ezra Pound (Faber and Faber, 1933): 111–53. An “Objectivists” Anthology, ed. Louis Zukofsky (To Publishers, 1932).

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 11/25/54: “Many thanks for your letter about Kitasono’s book”: Katue Kitasono, Black Rain: Poems & Drawings (Divers Press, 1954). Williams had written RC a letter, 11/8/54, saying: “Of the three small books you have sent me recently the one by Katue Kitasono pleased me best. It came at a moment when I was low and lifted my despair as a light shining under clouds.” [Stanford M0662]. See also letter to Charles Olson 10/18/50.

“a copy of your Selected Essays”: William Carlos Williams, Selected Essays of William Carlos Williams (Random House, 1954). RC wrote a review of this work, criticizing, as he does here, what he views as significant omissions. See Black Mountain Review 1, no. 4 (Winter 1954): 53–58.

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 12/6/54: “Many thanks for your letter”: Williams had written RC a very humble letter, 12/6/54, that ends: “All I can ask of you is to dwell on what you find good in the book and to attack mercilessly its and my faults.” [Stanford M0662].

LETTER TO CID CORMAN 12/24/54: “The pigeon book”: H. P. Macklin, A Handbook of Fancy Pigeons, vol. 1 (Divers Press, 1954).

“As to the magazine”: Page 2 of this letter is typed on Black Mountain Review stationery.

“I also hope to have some material on both dance & music”: Katherine Litz (1912–78), dancer, teacher and choreographer. David Tudor (1926–96), pianist, and composer—longtime associate of John Cage. Tudor’s was the first performance of Cage’s 4’33”.

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 1/26/55: “Olson just sent a letter”: This letter is unfortunately missing from the archive.

LETTER TO ALEXANDER TROCCHI 4/23/55: “the softest rejection I ever got”: Trocchi edited a Paris-based literary magazine, Merlin.

“in the last ND Annual”: Louis Zukofsky, “Bottom: Essay on Shakespeare,” New Directions in Prose & Poetry 14 (1953): 288–307.

“snitch one of those Beckett stories”: Trocchi published several Samuel Beckett pieces, including “The End” in Merlin 2, no. 3 (Summer–Autumn 1954): 144–58. Beckett’s work never appeared in the Black Mountain Review.

LETTER TO JACK SPICER 9/5/55: “If you have anything, or can think of anything, for the Black Mountain Review”: There is no evidence that Spicer ever sent poems to the Black Mountain Review.

LETTER TO ROBERT DUNCAN 9/6/55: “or John for that matter”: John Altoon, painter then living in Majorca.

“You are kind, so very damn kind, to recognize this ‘strength’ in me”: Refers to Duncan’s letters to RC dated August 24 and 25, 1955. For more on Duncan’s views of RC’s family in Majorca (“the wreck of the house”), see his letter to Levertov dated 8/24/55, in The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, ed. Robert J. Bertholf and Albert Gelpi (Stanford University Press, 2004), 23–27.

“Do send me some poems for it; also either the Olson article, or the one on the imagination we had talked about”: See Robert Duncan, “Notes on Poetics Regarding Olson’s Maximus,” Black Mountain Review 6 (Spring 1956): 201–11.

“Ida Hodes”: Worked as secretary for the San Francisco Poetry Center. Close friend of Duncan and Jess.

“The announcement is a real lulu: very damn good”: Refers to the limited edition of Duncan’s For Caesar’s Gate: Poems 1945–1950 with seventeen collages by Jess Collins (Divers Press, 1955).

“ALL THAT IS LOVELY IN MEN is now in proof”: RC, All That Is Lovely In Men, drawings by Dan Rice (Jonathan Williams/Jargon, 1955).

“Your sense of GOODBYE”: In a letter to RC, dated 8/24/55, Duncan recommended using RC’s “Goodbye” for the final poem in All That Is Lovely In Men, but RC went instead with the title poem, “All That Is Lovely in Men” [CP I, 147]. RC, “Goodbye,” Black Mountain Review 6 (Spring 1956): 163. Republished in A Form of Women (Jargon/Corinth, 1959): n.p. [CP I, 159].

“that ms/ I made up, before leaving, i.e., to have it follow, as an ‘end’, after THE DRESS”: The Dress refers to a manuscript of RC’s prose and poetry that was never published under that title.

“Wolpe”: Stefan Wolpe, composer who taught at Black Mountain College from 1952 to 1956.

LETTER TO ROBERT DUNCAN 9/24/55: “will have about 25pp”: Louis Zukofsky, “Songs of Degrees” and “Bottom: On Shakespeare—Part Two,” Black Mountain Review 6 (Spring 1956): 15–25, 119–57.

“he had a record”: Available as “Reading on KPFA Radio, Berkeley, August 6, 1954,” available on the Zukofsky author page at PennSound, http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/.

“have since listened to, I hope carefully, her reading”: Marianne Moore reads “In Distrust of Merits” on the LP recording Pleasure Dome: An Audible Anthology of Modern Poetry Read by Its Creators, ed. Lloyd Frankenberg (Columbia Masterworks, 1949).

“a record Charles & I made here a year ago”: Available as “Studio Recording at Black Mountain College c. 1954,” on the Charles Olson and RC author pages at PennSound, http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/.

“I stayed at Julie’s”: Julie Eastman.

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 10/31/55: “Your new book came”: William Carlos Williams, Journey to Love (Random House, 1955).

“Cat bird singing”: RC, “Air: ‘Cat Bird Singing,’” Black Mountain Review 6 (Spring 1956): 164. Republished in A Form of Women. [CP I, 165].

“I used your article as the ‘kick-off’ piece”: William Carlos Williams, “Two Pieces,” Black Mountain Review 7 (Autumn 1957): 164–68.

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 5/17/56: “impossible relation with Marthe Rexroth”: See letter to Denise Levertov 4/22/58.

“I liked that long poem, very much”: Charles Olson, “As the Dead Prey Upon Us,” first published in Ark II/Moby I (1956–57): 12–19. The same issue features Jack Kerouac’s “230th Chorus: From Mexico City Blues “(19–20) and RC’s “Ballad of the Despairing Husband” (30–31).

“I’ll copy out a bit to enclose here”: RC enclosed his typescript of about a page, single-spaced, of a page of Kerouac’s prose beginning: “. . . Mile post 46.9 is San Jose scene of a dozen interested bums lounging in the weeds along the track with their packs of junk,” etc.

“It’s very damn good to hear of Marshall’s poems”: Edward Marshall’s poem “Leave the Word Along” appears in Black Mountain Review 7 (Autumn 1957): 38–51.

LETTER TO JACK KEROUAC 5/26/56: “Locke + Valery”: Locke and Valery McCorkle, friends of Kerouac as well as Gary Snyder, Lew Welch, and others associated with the San Francisco scene.

“Neal”: Neal Cassady. Close associate of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs. Cassady was the famed “Dean Moriarty” of Kerouac’s On the Road.

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 5/28/56: “and the fact a man here will do, or wants to, a small book”: RC’s If You (San Francisco: Porpoise Bookshop, 1956).

LETTER TO MITCH GOODMAN 7/18/56: “but there was and is Marthe as well”: Refers to RC’s relationship with Marthe Rexroth. See letter to Levertov 4/22/58.

“7th issue of the mag . . . Sherry Mangan, Reminiscence From A Hilltop.”: Sherry Mangan, “Reminiscence from a Hilltop,” Black Mountain Review 7 (Autumn 1957): 63–82.

“Herbert Read”: English poet and critic. See Edward Dahlberg and Herbert Read, “Two Letters,” Black Mountain Review 7 (Autumn 1957): 5–24.

“William Lee (author of a pocket book: JUNKY)”: See William Burroughs, published as William Lee, “From Naked Lunch, Book III,” Black Mountain Review 7 (Autumn 1957): 144–48.

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 8/8/56: “Phillip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder et al. The next issue of the BMR”: Poems published in Black Mountain Review 7 (Autumn 1957) include Ginsberg’s “America” (25–29); Whalen’s “3: Variations: All About Love” (134–39); and Snyder’s “Changes: 3” (162–63).

“I should like to print a short preface you had written”: William Carlos Williams, “Empty Mirror,” composed in 1952 and printed in Black Mountain Review 7 (Autumn 1957): 238–40. Reprinted in Allen Ginsberg, Empty Mirror: Early Poems (Totem Press/Corinth Books, 1961), 5–6.

“Ed Corbett is doing the cover”: Refers to Black Mountain Review 7 (Autumn 1957).

LETTER TO JACK KEROUAC 10/11/56: “It’s good to hear of Grove”: Likely refers to Kerouac’s The Subterraneans (Grove Press, 1958).

LETTER TO MITCH GOODMAN 11/4/56: “things are not very simple for you”: In a letter to RC (dated 10/13/56), Goodman described his publishing difficulties and sense of loneliness while living with his family in Guadalajara. [Stanford M0662].

“A few weeks ago, at Sender’s”: RC reviewed Sender’s The Sphere (1950) and The Affable Hangman (1953) in “Ramon Sender: Two Novels,” Black Mountain Review 5 (Summer 1955): 216–24.

“Dennie’s sequence of poems, in ARK”: See Levertov’s poems “Central Park, Winter, After Sunset,” “A Song,” “The Springtime,” “The Third Dimension,” and “Laying the Dust” in Ark II/Moby I (1956–57): 1–4.

“I’ll send you a portfolio of mine that is just done”: RC, If You, illustrations by Fielding Dawson (Porpoise Bookshop, 1956). From the series Poems & Portfolio 8, edited by Henry Evans from San Francisco.

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 1/1/57: “I thought of your, ‘I am a poet. I am. I am . . . ’”: Lines from William Carlos Williams, “The Desert Music,” Origin 6 (Summer 1952): 65–75, collected in William Carlos Williams, The Desert Music and Other Poems (Random House, 1954).

“I have your notes on Ford and Marsden Hartley”: William Carlos Williams, “Beginnings: Marsden Hartley” and “Les Amis de Ford Madox Ford,” Black Mountain Review 7 (Autumn 1957): 164–68.

LETTER TO DENISE LEVERTOV 1/23/57: “for this coming issue”: See Levertov, “Action” and “Everything That Acts Is Actual” in Black Mountain Review 7 (Autumn 1957): 159–61.

“I’ve read Davis’ poems’”: H. L. Davis’s Winds of Morning (William Morrow, 1952). This from Levertov’s letter to RC, dated 8/27/57: “An odd thing that HL Davis whose poems from the twenties I sent you (and did you read that pocket book called ‘Winds of Morning’?) is sitting right here in Oaxaca. Expect to meet him in a couple days. Must be in the stars.”

LETTER TO ALLEN GINSBERG 2/6/57: “you & Jack & Peter”: Jack Kerouac and Peter Orlovsky.

“you saw Fee Dawson, Joel”: Fielding Dawson and Joel Oppenheimer.

“BMR #7 will come at last, don’t worry”: Black Mountain Review 7 (Autumn 1957). See note for 8/8/56 to Williams.

“I’ll write to Phil”: Philip Whalen.

LETTER TO ED DORN 4/27/57: “Bowl of Flowers”: Unpublished Dorn poem sent to RC in letter dated 4/24/57.

“H. D.’s war trilogy”: Published by Oxford University Press as The Walls Do Not Fall (1944), Tribute to Angels (1945), and The Flowering of the Rod (1946).

“Liquor and love”: William Carlos Williams, “The World Narrowed to a Point,” The Wedge (Cummington Press, 1944), 37.

“Juggler’s Thot”: RC, “Juggler’s Thought,” Measure 2 (Winter 1958): 11. Republished in RC, A Form of Women. [CP I, 151].

“Joel’s book, The Dutiful Son”: Joel Oppenheimer, The Dutiful Son: Poems (J. Williams/Jargon, 1956).

“Chan’s picture”: Dorn’s stepdaughter, Chansonette Buck.

“Pcocek and Vaquero”: Edward Dorn, “Vaquero,” The Collected Poems: 1956–1974 (Four Seasons, 1975), 4.

“Zukofsky’s ANEW”: Louis Zukofsky, Anew: Poems (Decker Press, 1946).

POSTCARD TO DONALD M. ALLEN [UNDATED, CA. 1958]: “I think I could cut him”: RC is using the jazz lingo of the time to let Allen know he had a manuscript he considered superior to O’Hara’s Meditations in an Emergency (Grove Press, 1957). It is worth noting that while editing his anthology The New American Poetry: 1945–1960 (Grove Press, 1960), Allen sent RC a “tentative list” of poets that included O’Hara. Allen to RC, letter dated 10/6/58. [Stanford M0662].

LETTER TO JACK KEROUAC 1/31/58: “I wish I could get to NY C for the movie”: Kerouac had written RC a letter, 1/13/58, praising two issues of the Black Mountain Review. He also writes, “We’re going to make a movie in NY this May. Come on up, with beard, take the lead part. Be a painter in a movie. WE is just a photog and I, with foundation money.” [Stanford M0662].

LETTER TO PAUL BLACKBURN 3/8/58: “Your comments”: Blackburn had written RC, 3/2/58, offering detailed comments on RC’s poems “The Invoice” [CP I, 183], “For a Friend” [CP, 188], “The Tunnel” [CP I, 176] and “The Three Ladies” [CP I, 157]. Published in For Love: Poems 1950–1960 (Scribner’s, 1962), 86, 91, 80, 61.

“So. I’ll take Myth, No Myth”: Refers to plans for the unrealized final issue of Black Mountain Review. Blackburn enclosed seven poems with his letter, indicating that “Myth, No Myth” was the only one not taken elsewhere. Published in The Collected Poems of Paul Blackburn, ed. by Edith Jarolim (Persea Books, 1985), 69.

“Equally your Mexican bandit, if free?”: Blackburn, “The Encounter,” from The New American Poetry, 76.

“I like your Cool Departure very much”: Blackburn, “Song for a Cool Departure,” Evergreen Review 1, no. 4 (1957): 143–44.

“At the Crossroad”: Blackburn, “At the Crossroad,” The Nets (Trobar Books, 1961), n.p.

“I’m sorry to hear about the Oxford dons”: Blackburn wrote in his letter, “Oxford dons have farted all over my anthology . . .” [Stanford M0662]. Blackburn’s lifetime effort of translating the Old Provençal poets, which started with his edition of Proensa (Divers Press, 1953), was published posthumously as Proensa: An Anthology of Troubadour Poetry, edited by George Economou (University of California Press, 1978).

“I hope Freddie”: Blackburn had mentioned that his wife, Freddie, was ill.

“. . . the pistol. My asshole”: From Blackburn’s “The Encounter” (see above).

“I’ve missed you”: RC and Blackburn had been estranged for nearly four years, following a violent physical confrontation when they were both living in Majorca in 1954. The only time they ever discussed the issue openly was in a letter by Blackburn, 12/9/67, with RC’s response 1/15/68, included in this volume. For a sense of the lifelong regret RC felt over this incident, see the poem “Paul,” published in his last book On Earth: Last Poems and an Essay (University of California Press, 2006), 10–11. [CP II, 609–10].

LETTER TO DENISE LEVERTOV 4/22/58: “I’m sorry to hear about all the ugliness”: Levertov kept RC apprised of Kenneth Rexroth’s reactions in the years after RC’s affair (1956) with Marthe Rexroth. Levertov to RC, dated “Sunday” circa spring 1957: “KR is here & suspecting you saw Marthe in SF Easter wk. He’s threatening again to kill you. He says he will go to Albuquerque & shoot you, & that he will not be punished as, in N.M., if a man kills his wife’s lover it is OK.” [Stanford M0662].

“I can relieve you about the supposed quote”: In the same letter above, Levertov reports that Rexroth was spreading sexual and drug-related stories about RC, adding, “He says you quoted letters from me to you, in writing to Marthe, & that these quotations played some part in the affair.”

LETTER TO DENISE LEVERTOV AND MITCH GOODMAN 8/13/58: “I went to see Blum”: Franz Blum.

“Otherwise I read Under the Volcano”: Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano (Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947).

LETTER TO ED DORN 11/16/58: “long poem of yours re yr mother”: Dorn’s poem “Hide of My Mother,” in New American Poetry, 98–103.

“Douglas Woolf”: Novelist. RC published Douglas Woolf, Hypocrite Days (Divers Press, 1955).

“My Love”: RC, “My Love,” Poetry (April 1959): 13. Republished in A Form of Women. [CP I, 181].

LETTER TO ROBERT DUNCAN 8/20/59: “Maddy’s and Jimmy’s and Jack’s addresses, lost in getting here”: Madeline Gleason, James Broughton, and Jack Spicer.

“a long letter from Donald Allen”: Allen’s letter to RC, dated 8/8/59, discussing editorial plans for the New American Poetry anthology. [Stanford M0662].

LETTER TO ALLEN GINSBERG 9/7/59: “KADDISH in BIG TABLE #2”: Ginsberg, “Kaddish,” Big Table 2 (Summer 1959): 19–23. The recording can be heard on the Ginsberg author page at PennSound under “Reading Recent Poems at Robert Creeley’s Home, Likely 1959,” http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound.

“Gregory’s picture”: See Gregory Corso’s picture in “Bang, Bong, Bing,” Time 74, no. 10 (September 7, 1959): 80.

LETTER TO JACK KEROUAC 9/28/59: “I wangled a copy of DR SAX out of Don Allen”: Jack Kerouac, Doctor Sax (Grove Press, 1959).

“I just ‘marketed’ a poem involving you”: RC, “Jack’s Blues,” Poetry 96 (May 1960): 71.

“I liked very very much the poem in YUGEN”: Jack Kerouac, “2 Blues and 4 Haikus,” Yugen 4 (Spring 1959): 18–19.

LETTER TO JACK KEROUAC 10/20/59: “that record you made with him”: Refers to album by Jack Kerouac (spoken word) and Steve Allen (piano), Poetry for the Beat Generation (Rosemeadow Music Publishing Corp/Hanover LP #5000, 1959).

“I’ll ask Wilentz Bros”: See letter to Allen Ginsberg 10/31/59.

“I have a quote like they say from Peter”: Peter Orlovsky.

LETTER TO GENEVIEVE CREELEY 10/26/59: “Only Sam Smiles himself could make of this place a ‘happy time.’”: Refers to Samuel Smiles, Scottish author of the highly influential Self Help (1859).

LETTER TO ED DORN 10/26/59: “PRIDE”: Unpublished RC poem.

“Jack writes you are a great writer”: Jack Kerouac.

“Jane Harrison’s Prolegomena”: Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge University Press, 1903).

LETTER TO ALLEN GINSBERG 10/31/59: “Jack wrote about the anthology you and he are editing”: Refers to unrealized project of a co-edited Beat anthology to be published by Avon. See the correspondence from 1959 in Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters, edited by Bill Morgan and David Stanford (Viking, 2010).

“the contract I have with Wilentz states I should clear all use of the poems from the book with him”: Refers to RC, A Form of Women. Eli and Theodore Wilentz published Corinth books.

“I’ve been looking for Burroughs’ book”: Likely refers to William Burroughs, Naked Lunch (Grove Press, 1959).

“Ginsberg has carried news of and his enthusiasm”: Refers to Robert Duncan, The Opening of the Field (Grove, 1960); and Allen Ginsberg, “from Kaddish,” Yugen 5 (1959): 2–4.

“Roi Jones sent Ron L/s book”: Ron Loewinsohn, Watermelons (Totem Press, 1959).

LETTER TO LEROI JONES (AMIRI BARAKA) 11/8/59: “Duncan’s distinction between solitude and loneliness”: See Robert Duncan’s poem “Solitude” in “A Note and A Poem,” Migrant 2 (September 1959): 22–23.

“I haven’t got Mike M/s new book, and should much like it, if possible? I.e., can you spare a copy sans scene?”: Jones had just published Michael McClure, For Artaud (Totem Press, 1959).

“there is in the contract with Jonathan and Eli Wilentz clause to the effect no poems can be used without etc.”: Refers to RC’s “Somewhere” from A Form of Women. [CP I, 184]. Jonathan is Jonathan Williams. See also letter to Allen Ginsberg 10/31/59.

“So, this time at least, why don’t you use if agreeable what you otherwise have”: RC, “The Joke” (with doodle drawing) and “What’s for Dinner,” Yugen 6 (1960): 29, 31.

“if Gil would not be too much bothered by it?”: Refers to RC’s letter to Jones discussing Yugen 5 (1959), in particular Gilbert Sorrentino’s “Letter to the Editor: A Note on Gregory Corso’s To Black Mountain.” Jones and Hettie Jones published RC’s “Letter” in Yugen 6 (1960): 30.

LETTER TO JEROME ROTHENBERG 12/16/59: “God knows what to say of that poem”: Rothenberg published RC’s “The Animal” [CP I, 94] in his magazine Poems from the Floating World 2 (1960): 5–6.

“only emotion endures”: Refers to Ezra Pound, “A Retrospect,” Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, ed. T. S. Eliot (New Directions, 1935), 3–14.

“strarange nambe [sic] for a magazine”: Sonia Raiziss was an editor for Chelsea magazine. RC published “The Hands,” “Lady in Black,” “After Mallarmé,” and “The Eye” in Chelsea 7 (May 1960): 65–67.

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 12/24/59: “might I use the poem which James Laughlin printed”: William Carlos Williams, To Be Recited to Flossie on Her Birthday, folded sheet with 8 panels (New Directions, 1959).

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 12/24/59: “JABBERWOCK arrived also last night”: Refers to Jabberwock: Edinburgh University Review (1959), a special issue on American poets (primarily Beat) assembled by outgoing editor Alex Neish. Hugh MacDiarmid introduces the issue, which includes Charles Olson’s “Good News! Fr Canaan” (60–63) and RC’s “The Warning” and “The Hill” (49).

“I seem to be lucky in that anthology, i.e., he’s got a good so-called group”: Refers to RC’s poems in Donald Allen’s The New American Poetry, among them “The Innocence” (77) [CP I, 118] and “The Awakening” (86) [CP I, 205].

“I don’t know a damn thing about the KULCHUR magazine”: NY-based Kulchur magazine (1960–65), for which LeRoi Jones was a contributing editor.

“Spicer’s mimeographed bull-e-tin”: Mimeograph magazine “J” (1959–61), edited by Jack Spicer.

LETTER TO ED DORN 1/9/60: “The poems you send I like less than A Country Song”: Edward Dorn, “A Country Song” in The Newly Fallen (Totem Press, 1961).

“I read Rechy’s gig re Los Lost Angeles”: John Rechy, “The City of Lost Angels,” Evergreen Review 3, no. 10 (November–December, 1959): 10–27.

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 1/10/60: “Thank you . . . for those poems”: RC was soliciting poems on behalf of Renate Gerhardt for a German literary magazine.

“nakedness / is what one means”: Olson, “Maximus to Gloucester,” The Maximus Poems (Jargon/Corinth, 1960), 107.

“those poems are a series of experiments”: Allen Ginsberg, Howl, LP (Fantasy Records, 1959).

LETTER TO DON ALLEN 1/16/60: “starting on that review”: Writing on behalf of Evergreen Review editor Barney Rosset, Allen commissioned RC to review several new books (by McClure, Snyder, Loewinsohn, and Whalen) and suggested incorporating Olson’s “Projective Verse”; see Allen to RC, 1/12/60. RC turned in the review by March, but Rosset declined to use it, claiming that too much material was already accepted. It eventually appeared as “The New World,” Yugen 7 (1961): 13–18.

“BMR anthology idea”: Allen wrote to RC on 1/12/60: “Lately, I’ve wondered if a [Black Mountain Review] antho might not be a possible idea. Why don’t you, if you take to the idea, come up with a proposed line up of contents for such a book, which could include other work as well, focusing on the BMC experience, etc.?”

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 3/16/60: “Your letter, and the two articles”: William Carlos Williams letter to RC, dated 1/18/60, includes sentence RC would use as jacket blurb on For Love: “You have the subtlest feeling for the measure that I encounter anywhere except in the verses of Ezra Pound whom I cannot equal.” [Stanford M0662].

“the notes in SPECTRUM”: William Carlos Williams, “Measure,” Spectrum 3, no. 3 (Fall 1959): 131–57.

“I read Mrs. Solt more cautiously”: See Mary Ellen Solt, “William Carlos Williams: Poems in the American Idiom,” FOLIO 25, no. 1 (Winter 1960): 3–28.

“re the iambic pattern, written by Robert Bly”: Robert Bly aka Crunk, “The Work of Donald Hall,” The Fifties 3 (1959): 32–46. See also the prior issue containing Bly/Crunk, “The Work of Robert Creeley,” The Fifties 3 (1959): 10–21.

“Mrs. Solt’s poems in the issue of FOLIO after this one you’d sent”: Mary Ellen Solt, “Three Poems,” FOLIO 25, no. 2 (Spring 1960): 42–44.

“Duncan whose Poem”: Robert Duncan, “Poem Beginning with a Line from Pindar,” Evergreen Review 4, no. 11 (January–February 1960): 134–42.

“the introduction to Zukofsky’s ‘All eyes!’”: Louis Zukofsky, “‘All eyes!’ from Bottom: On Shakespeare,” FOLIO 25, no. 2 (Spring 1960): 7–13.

LETTER TO LOUIS ZUKOFSKY 3/30/60: “The book got here safely”: Louis Zukofsky, “A” 1–12 (Origin, 1959). Published from Kyoto in an edition of two hundred by Cid Corman. The appendices include Zukofsky’s “Poetry / For My Son When He Can Read” and Williams’s “Zukofsky.”

LETTER TO PAUL BLACKBURN 4/24/60: “e.g., in Galley Sail Review”: Gary Snyder, “Kyoto Sketch,” Galley Sail Review 5 (Winter 1959–60): 19. The same issue includes RC’s “The Dream” (4).

“Did Macmillan publish your book?”: Blackburn tried Macmillan for his Provençal anthology after being turned down by Oxford. See letter to Blackburn 3/8/58.

“Scribner’s stories break”: RC’s contract with Scribner’s for The Gold Diggers.

“May issue”: See RC poems in Poetry 96, no. 2 (May 1960): 71–82.

LETTER TO ED DORN 9/14/60: “I wrote 13 single-spaced pages of sd novel”: RC, The Island (Scribner’s, 1963).

“THE GINGER MAN”: J. P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man (McDowell, Obolensky, 1958).

“THE BOAT”: RC’s early short story, “The Boat,” Kenyon Review 15, no. 4 (Autumn 1953): 571–76. Republished in RC, The Collected Prose of Robert Creeley (Dalkey Archive, 2001), 69–73.

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 9/21/60: “Yeah! I.e. I agree”: Williams sent RC his two-page essay, “The American Idiom,” 8/23/60, with the cover note, “AGREE OR NOT?” [Stanford M0662].

“Therefore each speech”: RC quotes from William Carlos Williams, “Author’s Introduction” in The Wedge.

“Whatmough . . . a pocket book called LANGUAGE”: Joshua Whatmough, Harvard professor of linguistics, author of Language: A Modern Synthesis (Mentor Book/New American Library, 1957).

“poetic discourse is highly peculiar to a language”: Same as preceding entry.

LETTER TO JEROME ROTHENBERG 11/6/60: “Thank you so much for the copy of your book”: RC refers to poems from Jerome Rothenberg’s White Sun Black Sun (Hawk’s Well Press, 1960). Note that this letter, minus the penultimate paragraph, was previously published in “Jerome Rothenberg and Robert Creeley: An Exchange—Deep Image and Mode,” Kulchur 6, no. 2 (1962): 25–42.

“Thanks too for the copy of Robert Kelly’s notes”: Robert Kelly, “Notes on the Poetry of Image,” Trobar 2 (1961): 14–16.

LETTER TO ED DORN 11/20/60: “Scribners took the goddamn poems”: RC, For Love: Poems 1950–1960 (Scribner’s, 1962).

“Burroughs in SIDEWALK 2”: William Burroughs, “Have You Seen Slotless City?” in Sidewalk 2 (1960). Editor Alex Neish was formerly the editor of Jabberwock. See letter to Olson 12/24/59.

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 12/18/60: “the birthday poem for your wife”: See letter to William Carlos Williams 12/24/59.

“Scribners will publish a sort of collected poems of past ten years”: RC, For Love (Scribner’s, 1962).

LETTER TO JEROME ROTHENBERG 12/18/60: “not yours, certainly not in that ‘Black milk of morning’”: See Jerome Rothenberg’s translation of Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge,” or “A Death Fugue,” in New Young German Poets, ed. Jerome Rothenberg (City Lights Pocket Poets Series, 1959), 16.

“Kitasono’s The Shadow”: Poem by Katue Kitasono in Black Rain: Poems & Drawings (Divers Press, 1954).

LETTER TO HUGH KENNER 12/18/60: “NR’s audience”: National Review magazine. Kenner served as literary editor.

“Send regards to Ida”: Louis Zukofsky, Barely and Widely (C.Z., 1958). This version of the poem contains slight variations to that which appears in Anew: Complete Shorter Poetry (New Directions, 2011).

“The risk his text takes when it comes and foresees”: Louis Zukofsky, “‘All eyes!’ from Bottom: On Shakespeare,” Folio 25, no. 2 (Spring 1960): 7–13. Collected in Zukofsky, Bottom: On Shakespeare (Wesleyan University Press, 2002), 183.

“Constantly seeking and ordering relative quantities and qualities of sight, sound, and intellection”: Also from Bottom: On Shakespeare (18).

LETTER TO PAUL BLACKBURN 1/11/61: “recent issue of TROBAR”: Magazine of the “deep image” poets, edited (1960–64) by George Economou, Joan Kelly, and Robert Kelly. RC’s poems “The House” and “Love Comes Quietly” appear in Trobar 2 (1961): 21.

“Kelly’s note”: Robert Kelly, “Notes on the Poetry of Image,” Trobar 2 (1961): 14–16.

“Any tendency to abstract general statement is a greased slide”: See Ezra Pound, “Go in fear of abstractions. Do not retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose,” from “A Retrospect,” Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (New Directions, 1954), 5.

“Scribner’s have taken the ‘collected’ poems ms/”: RC, For Love (Scribner’s, 1962).

“Paul C/ is printing in the next BIG TABLE”: Poet and editor Paul Carroll cofounded Big Table after he and other editors of the Chicago Review were censored by the university administration for publishing an excerpt from William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch.

LETTER TO ED DORN 1/19/61: “I like that note you did”: Dorn’s Note for the Paterson Society (Paterson Society, 12/6/1960).

“I heard from Eberhart at Library of Congress”: Richard Eberhart, Library of Congress Consultant in Poetry from 1959 to 1961.

“Nims is present editor there”: John Frederick Nims, Visiting Editor of Poetry magazine (Chicago) from October 1960 to September 1961.

“I don’t see much goddamn else—as this ‘deep image’”: See Dorn’s response to RC, dated 1/23/61: “Deep images, better, deep sounds, come mostly from the rectum.”

“OUTBURST connection”: Magazine edited by poet Tom Raworth from 1961 to 1963. The first issue features RC, “A New Testament: William Burroughs’ The Naked Lunch,” Outburst 1 (1961): n.p.

LETTER TO TOM RAWORTH 1/23/61: “note on Burroughs’ NAKED LUNCH”: See letter to Ed Dorn, 1/19/61.

“He is presently writing a very interesting autobiography”: Sections from Edward Dahlberg’s “Because I Was Flesh” appear in Big Table 2 (1959): 71–98, Big Table 3 (1959): 57–81, and Big Table 5 (1960): 23–30.

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 1/29/61: “The recent political businesses”: The Guatemalan civil war began while the Creeleys were there, lasting from 1960 to 1996. The war pitted leftist groups supported by indigenous Mayans and poor peasants against an increasingly militarized and totalitarian government. According to the Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification, over two hundred thousand people were killed or disappeared over the course of the conflict.

“The so-called novel”: RC, The Island.

“BIG TABLE is printing a section, I’ll ask him to send copy”: Big Table ceased publication (with the fifth issue in the fall of 1960) before it could publish a section of RC’s The Island.

“Fire”: RC, “Fire,” Between Worlds 1, no. 2 (Spring–Summer 1961): 219. The same issue of this Colorado magazine contains poems by Bern Porter, Mina Loy, Barbara Guest, and others. Republished in For Love, 156. [CP I, 294].

“LeRoi has asked me to review Maximus for Yugen”: RC, “Some Notes on Olson’s Maximus,” Yugen 8 (1962): 51–55.

LETTER TO LOUIS ZUKOFSKY 3/17/61: “I’m pleased the use of yourself”: Refers to RC, “A Quick Graph,” Floating Bear 2 (1961): 5–6.

“Mary Ellen Solt”: Poet and editor. See especially Concrete Poetry: A World View, ed. Mary Ellen Solt (Indiana University Press, 1968).

“trying to get that review of ‘A’ and Barely and widely”: RC reviews Zukofsky’s “A” 1–12 and Barely and widely in The Sparrow 18 (November 1962): 9–11.

“your Catullus translations, e.g. the one in Anew always impressed me, as those also in Poetry not too long ago”: “Catullus viii” appears in Louis Zukofsky, Anew (James A. Decker, 1946), 32–33. See also letter to Louis Zukofsky 6/26/61.

“with the section of Bottom”: Zukofsky, “From Bottom: On Shakespeare,” Poetry 97 (December 1960): 141

“Also that section earlier in Folio”: See letter to Hugh Kenner 12/18/60.

“I want to enclose the poem for you, published in Trobar”: RC, “The House (for L. Z.),” Trobar 2 (1961): 21.

LETTER TO ED DORN 3/26/61: “I enclose sheet from Nat’l Review”: From Hugh Kenner, then serving as literary editor for the National Review.

“or me in the Nation”: M. L. Rosenthal made slighting references to RC’s work in a review in The Nation, 11/1/58.

LETTER TO LOUIS ZUKOFSKY 6/26/61: “I’m very very pleased the review was all right”: See letter to Louis Zukofsky 3/17/61.

“Donald Hutter is the editor at Scribner’s”: There is no evidence that Scribner’s sought to publish Zukofsky.

“I do know he took your name and address and the titles”: Louis Zukofsky, Barely and widely (C.Z., 1958) and Some Time (Jonathan Williams, 1956).

“Tell me, please, what now seems possible for your Catullus translations”: Sections from Celia and Louis Zukofsky’s homophonic translations were published in Origin: Second Series 1 (April 1961) and appeared in each consecutive issue through Origin: Second Series 13 (April 1964). The translations were first collected in Catullus (Gai Valeri Catulli Veronensis Liber), translated by Celia and Louis Zukofsky (Cape Goliard/Grossman, 1969).

LETTER TO ED AND HELENE DORN 10/9/61: “very happy that things there are working out”: Dorn’s new job teaching English 101. See Dorn’s letter to RC, 9/26/61. [Stanford M0662].

“The job is good and simple”: RC was then a visiting lecturer at the University of New Mexico.

LETTER TO JACK KEROUAC 1/19/62: “It was very very good to hear from you”: Kerouac’s postcard to RC, dated 1/15/62, begins: “Your line, or phrase, in ND 17—‘be wet’—reminds me of the time you were sleeping in my rosebush space & I woke you up in the morning yelling ‘Be enlightened!’—You said: ‘It’s like asking water to be wet’—which I never forgot—which didn’t go into Dharma Bums because including you in that story would’ve meant another novel” [Stanford M0662].

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 4/6/62: “I’m very pleased . . . for that review of the book”: Olson’s review of RC’s For Love, from Village Voice, September 13, 1962, reprinted in Charles Olson, Collected Prose, ed. Donald Allen and Benjamin Friedlander (University of California Press, 1997), 285–87.

“a ‘hell’ of seen limits, I mean the accident in Guatemala, with the truck, killing the old Indian man by the side of the road”: The editors consulted Bobbie Louise Hawkins on this passage. A truck in which RC was a passenger, driven by a worker on the finca they lived on, struck an elderly Indian man. The driver got out, established that he was in fact dead, got back in, and drove off. Bobbie Louise Hawkins added, “This is how they regarded the local Indians.”

“I left him naked”: Olson, “Maximus, to Gloucester,” The Maximus Poems (Jargon/Corinth, 1960), 107.

LETTER TO JACK KEROUAC 5/30/62: “what Don Allen wants”: Allen and RC edited New American Story (Grove Press, 1965).

“Warren Tallman, who did that note on your prose”: Warren Tallman, “Kerouac’s Sound,” Evergreen Review 4, no. 11 (January–February 1960): 153–69.

“Lawrence F/”: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, American poet and publisher.

LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 6/4/62: “your DESERT MUSIC”: See letter to William Carlos Williams 1/1/57.

“your plug very generously to the jacket”: See letter to William Carlos Williams 9/21/60: “Robert Creeley has the subtlest feeling for the measure that I encounter anywhere except in the verses of Ezra Pound.”

LETTER TO ROSMARIE WALDROP 8/17/62: “Burning Deck”: Burning Deck (1962–65), magazine edited by James Camp, D. C. Hope, and Keith (nee Bernard) Waldrop. RC’s “The Lion and the Dog” appears in Burning Deck 1 (Fall 1962): 10–11.

POSTCARD TO JACK KEROUAC 11/25/62: “BIG SUR”: Jack Kerouac, Big Sur (Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1962).

LETTER TO PAUL BLACKBURN 8/30/63: “after the wild business in Vancouver”: Through their association with the University of British Columbia, RC and Warren Tallman organized the Vancouver Poetry Conference in August 1963, featuring readings and workshops by Duncan, Ginsberg, Levertov, and Olson.

“Does 8th Street have the novel on sale”: NYC bookstore. RC’s novel, The Island.

“a contract to do a book now on Olson for that Twayne series”: A book that never materialized.

LETTER TO ED DORN 9/13/63: “I liked Dawn”: Dawn Stram. Student recommended to the Vancouver scene by Dorn in letter to RC, dated 3/11/63. [Stanford M0662]

LETTER TO DENISE LEVERTOV 10/19/63: “except for the novel finally”: RC, The Island.

“The book again—with my New England nature”: RC, For Love: Poems 1950–1960.

“be idiot awkward with it”: From Robert Duncan, “For A Muse Meant” (for Denise Levertov), in Letters: Poems MCMLIII–MCMLVI (Jonathan Williams/Jargon, 1958), n.p.

“I think the two you take”: Levertov was poetry editor for The Nation. See The Nation 197 (December 14, 1963) for RC, “The Messengers” (404) and “For Leslie” (420). Republished in RC, Words (Scribner’s, 1967), 31, 32. [CP I, 277, 278].

“that poem for Allen”: RC’s “The Messengers” is dedicated to Allen Ginsberg.

“B.C.”: This Ginsberg poem appeared in the Minnesota Review (October–December 1965): 307–9. It was not included in any subsequent collection.

LETTER TO LEROI JONES (AMIRI BARAKA) 10/21/63: “your book”: LeRoi Jones, Blues People (William Morrow, 1963).

“the Dante book”: LeRoi Jones, The System of Dante’s Hell (Grove Press, 1965).

LETTER TO CLARK COOLIDGE 10/26/63: “going to start something”: See Joglars (1964–66), poetry magazine founded by Clark Coolidge and (George) Michael Palmer.

LETTER TO ALEXANDER TROCCHI 11/1/63: “people at Vancouver”: Vancouver Poetry Conference, August 1963. See letter to Blackburn 8/30/63.

“Also, Don Allen is starting new magazine”: Refers to Writing (1964–67), edited by Donald Allen from San Francisco.

“the warning re Calder”: John Calder, founder of Calder Publishing in London. Published multiple RC books, including The Island (1964), The Gold Diggers and Other Stories (1965), Poems 1950–1965 (1966), and The Finger (1970).

LETTER TO ANDREW CROZIER 11/15/63: “Migrant”: Magazine edited by Gael Turnbull. RC published poems and notes on jazz and urban America (“From a Tape Recording”) in Migrant 5 (March 1960): 14–19.

LETTER TO DENISE LEVERTOV 11/16/63: “lousy experience with Hatch the last time I tried to review”: Robert Hatch, editor at The Nation.

“Williams’ Pictures from Breughel”: A version of RC’s review was published as “The Fact of His Life,” in The Nation 195, no. 11 (October 13, 1962): 224. The original draft appears as “The Fact” in RC’s Collected Essays. [CE, 44–48].

“Then I quoted”: William Carlos Williams, “The Yellow Flower,” Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (New Directions, 1962), 89–91.

“and as it was, the last chance”: Williams died March 4, 1963, at his home in Rutherford.

“with Cid re the novel”: RC, The Island.

“Robert just did write”: Robert Duncan, poet.

“Robt and Scribners are apparently pretty settled now”: Robert Duncan, Roots and Branches (Scribner’s, 1964).

“I’m very interested in these poems of yours”: Refers to Levertov’s “Hypocrite Women,” “Our Bodies,” “Losing Track,” and “A Psalm Praising the Hair of Man’s Body,” in O Taste and See (New Directions, 1964), 70, 72, 74, 82; and “The Five-Day Rain,” in With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads (New Directions, 1959), 13.

“These are just two recent”: Two poems are enclosed with the letter. RC, “I,” from 12 Poets & One Painter (Four Seasons, 1964), 71. [CP I, 279]. RC, “Something,” Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts 5 (September 1964). [CP I, 281].

“Belmont paper re the novel . . . my grandfather who lived there plus a brief note on my father also”: Belmont, MA. RC’s father, Oscar Slade Creeley, and grandfather Thomas Laurie Creeley.

“Later I thought of”: William Carlos Williams, “Turkey in the Straw,” The Collected Later Poems of William Carlos Williams (New Directions, 1950), 204.

LETTER TO TOM RAWORTH 2/7/64: “Anyhow I made one or two small changes”: Translation of poem by Rainer Gerhardt. A portion of this letter was previously published in the “Homage to Gerhardt” issue of Work 4 (1965), guest edited by Tom Raworth for the Detroit Artists Workshop Press.

“I’m thinking of an issue of Northwest Review”: A forthcoming issue with Olson selections was the first casualty after the University of Oregon suspended the magazine as a result of the politically incendiary content of the prior year. See Olson’s letter supporting the editor Edward Van Aelstyn, dated March 7, 1964, in Charles Olson, Selected Letters, ed. Ralph Maud (University of California Press, 2000), 308–10.

“Kulchur plans an issue on Zukofsky’s work shortly”: See Kulchur 4, no. 14 (Summer 1964), which includes RC’s “A Note on Louis Zukofsky” (2–4).

LETTER TO STAN BRAKHAGE 3/28/64: “will now take work”: RC, “The Dream,” Poetry 104 (June 1964): 133. [CP I, 298–301].

“Flaming Creatures”: 1963 film by Jack Smith.

LETTER TO ALEXANDER TROCCHI 7/16/64: “Ferlinghetti plans to print one of your statements in the next issue of his Journal for the Protection”: See Trocchi, “A Revolutionary Proposal,” City Lights Journal 2 (1964); Trocchi does not appear in Journal for the Protection of All Beings.

“Lita Hornick, KULCHUR”: Trocchi was never published in Hornick’s magazine Kulchur.

“I was very flattered and pleased to hear a photograph of one of your sculptures is used for the jacket of The Island”: The photograph was not used in the end. Note that RC elsewhere identifies Trocchi with the character “Manus” in The Island. See RC, “Introduction,” Black Mountain Review (AMS Press, 1969), vii. [CE, 509].

LETTER TO ED DORN 7/26/64: “Just now hearing reports of rioting in New York and Rochester”: The Harlem riots of 1964 began on July 16 in response to the shooting by an off-duty police officer of fifteen-year-old James Powell. The Rochester riots began on July 24 in response to police brutality.

“I liked sections of Gil’s long poem”: Probably refers to Gilbert Sorrentino, “The Bullpen Is Up and Throwing,” Wild Dog 9 (July 1964): 33–36.

LETTER TO LOUIS ZUKOFSKY 12/29/64: “I did get the copy”: Zukofsky, After I’s (Boxwood Press/Mother Press, 1964).

“Hall is now advisor to Harpers for poetry et al, and is hopeful of getting Bunting’s work collected and back in print”: Fulcrum Press of London published an edition of Bunting’s Collected Poems in 1968, but Hall’s involvement was unlikely.

“good visit with Charles Tomlinson also, and was pleased to hear of his issue of AGENDA, of your work”: Tomlinson edited a Zukofsky special issue for Agenda 3, no. 6 (December 1964).

LETTER TO ED DORN 6/2/65: “the way Gael Turnbull gets past that thinking of the obvious containment of his nature in that sequence in recent Poetry”: Gael Turnbull, “Twenty Words: Twenty Days: A Sketchbook & A Morula,” Poetry 106 (April 1965): 136.

LETTER TO ALLEN GINSBERG 6/2/65: “note in NY Times about your being crowned King of the May”: See “Czechs Oust Ginsberg, ‘Village’ Poet,” New York Times, May 17, 1965. According to the article, Ginsberg was expelled from Czechoslovakia shortly after he was “elected king of the Czech youths’ May Day festival.”

“Alex Trocchi’s Sigma and this was a note of mine he’d kindly printed”: Trocchi published RC’s essay “An American Sense” in his stapled 8.5” × 14” portfolio series Sigma 26 (1964).

LETTER TO TOM AND VALERIE RAWORTH 6/23/65: “Penguin is doing I think a very active collection”: The New Writing in the USA, ed. Donald Allen and RC (Penguin, 1967).

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 10/16/65: “I’m very happy that damn introduction”: RC’s introduction to Selected Writings of Charles Olson, ed. Robert Creeley (New Directions, 1966).

“beginning with the Historic Moment of Vancouver etc”: Vancouver Poetry Conference (1963) organized by RC and Warren Tallman.

“review in NY Herald Tribune, Book Week”: See reviews of RC’s The Gold Diggers, by Alan Pryce-Jones, New York Herald Tribune, October 7, 1965, and R. Z. Sheppard, Book Week 3, no. 5 (October 10, 1965): 16. Noted in Mary Novik, Robert Creeley: An Inventory, 1945–1970 (Kent State University Press, 1973).

LETTER TO STEPHEN RODEFER 1/11/66: “subject of your dissertation”: Rodefer’s unfinished 1965 dissertation on RC.

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 1/26/66: “Al Cook wrote two days ago”: Albert Cook (1925–98), poet and literary critic, chair of English Department at SUNY -Buffalo, 1963–66.

LETTER TO ROBERT DUNCAN 4/8/66: “the one inescapable fact is, the State Dept is the sponsor”: Responds to Duncan’s four-page letter to RC, dated 4/6/66. Duncan expressed misgivings that RC could “go in a non-political way” and encouraged him to withdraw from the trip.

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 5/3/66: “I checked proofs”: Olson, Selected Writings, edited by RC (New Directions, 1966).

POSTCARD TO ALLEN GINSBERG 9/10/66: “Kirsten decided to go to local highschool here”: Kirsten Creeley.

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 9/24/66: “Afterwards went to Onetta’s”: Poet John Clarke was on the faculty in the English Department. Poets Albert Glover, Fred Wah, and Steven Rodefer were students.

LETTER TO ROBERT DUNCAN 3/6/67: “I’ll get hold of Irving Feldman”: Poet and professor at SUNY-Buffalo.

“You are so very kind”: Duncan responded to RC’s Words.

“Back to Hutter’s letter: those sections of PASSAGES you’d know very much I respect—eg. I read UPRISING”: Donald Hutter, editor at Scribner’s. Robert Duncan, “Up Rising,” The Nation 201, no. 7 (September 13, 1965): 146–47. Republished as “Up Rising: Passages 25,” in Of the War: Passages 22–27 (Oyez, 1966), n.p.

LETTER TO GEORGE OPPEN 3/19/67: “I regret missing your reading”: George Oppen read at the University at Buffalo on February 17, 1967.

“I’ll look for you at Basil B/s reading”: Basil Bunting.

LETTER TO ROBERT DUNCAN 10/26/67: “limited edition of ‘fugitive’ poems Walter Hamady is doing for me”: RC, The Charm: Early and Uncollected Poems (Perishable Press, 1967). The book dedication reads, “For Robert Duncan who made me see that possibility is more interesting than perfect . . .”

“Berlin lecture that was reprinted in Harper’s Bazaar”: RC, “I’m given to write poems.” Lecture delivered at the Literarisches Colloquium, Berlin, January 1967. Published in Ein Gedicht und sein Autor: Lyrik und Essay, ed. Walter Höllerer (Literarisches, 1967) and Harper’s Bazaar (July 1967). [CE, 496–505].

“possibility of The Black Sparrow Press doing something of Bobbie’s and mine together goes well”: RC, The Finger, with collages by Bobbie Creeley (Black Sparrow Press, 1968).

“Your Epilogus is a real gift . . . the sequences from PASSAGES also”: Robert Duncan, Epilogos (Black Sparrow Press, 1967). Robert Duncan, Of the War: Passages 22–27 (Oyez, 1966).

“Unhappily for the Arts Festival here, it contracted to being able to invite Charles, Lowell, and Allen”: Charles Olson, Robert Lowell, and Allen Ginsberg.

LETTER TO PAUL BLACKBURN 1/15/68: “copy of THE CITIES”: Blackburn, The Cities (Grove, 1967).

“And delight too to think of you now citting (sitting) in one of them cities”: RC’s aerogram is addressed to Blackburn in Valencia, Spain.

“remembering that wild night in Banalbufar”: See note to letter to Blackburn 3/8/58.

“Olson’s book”: Olson, Selected Writings (New Directions, 1966).

LETTER TO LOUIS ZUKOFSKY 9/7/68: “lovely issue of poetry (Poetry!)”: Poetry 112 (August 1968) featured long selections by Zukofsky (297–322), Charles Tomlinson (323–30), and RC (331–36).

LETTER TO ROBERT DUNCAN 2/12/69: “get sent to you both a ‘portfolio’ bound edition of NUMBERS”: RC and Robert Indiana collaborated on Numbers (Edition Domberger, 1968), published from Stuttgart in a slipcased book edition (2,500 copies) and a limited portfolio edition (160 copies).

“Too, did you get a copy of PIECES”: John Martin, founder of Black Sparrow Press. Refers to limited edition of RC, Pieces (Black Sparrow Press, 1968).

“I’ve seen proofs now for the Scribners edition PIECES—and it looks ok, and much as I’d hoped it might (for once)”: RC, Pieces (Scribner’s, 1969).

“Don says proofs”: RC, A Quick Graph: Collected Notes & Essays, ed. by Donald Allen (Four Seasons Foundation, 1970). RC, The Charm: Early and Uncollected Poems (Four Seasons Foundation, 1969).

“Finally, and most interesting at the moment”: R. B. Kitaj’s first solo exhibition, Pictures with Commentary, Pictures without Commentary, opened at the Marlborough Gallery in 1963, and today the gallery represents the artist’s estate. See their collaboration on RC, A Day Book, with plates by Kitaj (Graphis, 1972).

“If in debris I had not said how lovely”: Refers to limited edition of Robert Duncan, Names of People, illustrations by Jess (Black Sparrow Press, 1968).

“You know what kind of measure he was for me”: See RC, About Women, with lithographs by John Altoon (Gemini Limited, 1966).

LETTER TO CHARLES OLSON 1/1/70: “I’ll be back, hopefully about Jan. 10th”: Olson died of cancer on January 10, 1970, in New York City.

LETTER TO ALLEN GINSBERG 6/20/70: “little over 100 pp. now”: Allen Ginsberg, Indian Journals: March 1962–May 1963, Notebooks, Diary, Blank Pages, Writings (David Haselwood/City Lights, 1970).

LETTER TO BOBBIE CREELEY (BOBBIE LOUISE HAWKINS) 9/3/70: “Also got a new ‘impenetrable’ (raincoat)”: The French for raincoat is imperméable.

POSTCARD TO SARAH CREELEY [9/4/70]: “Sarah”: Daughter of RC and Bobbie Louise Hawkins born in 1957.

LETTER TO GENEVIEVE CREELEY 8/29/71: “Carlie came over about a week ago and seemed in good spirits. She was with a charming young man, so that seemed happy. She told me Lucy’s present young man is one she’s known previous to Lincoln, and that all seemed happy. I hope we’ll see more of both them now that they have cars.”: Lucie and Carly are Helen Creeley Power’s daughters.

POSTCARD TO ARMAND SCHWERNER 10/10/71: “Paul’s relation to me is really too complex”: Paul Blackburn died September 13, 1971.

LETTER TO BOBBIE CREELEY (BOBBIE LOUISE HAWKINS) 1/17/73: “from PLAYBOY John Clellon Holmes wrote on Jack Kerouac’s death and funeral”: John Clellon Holmes, “Gone in October,” Playboy, February 1973, 96–98, 140, 158–66.

“pictures of Bolinas’ flooding”: Bobbie wrote to RC on 1/12/73: “It’s poured rain since you left—downtown & all the towns hereabouts flooding. I just came in from digging runnels to let some of the water pass down into the creek instead of settling on the bridge.—I looked out this morning & the bridge was a pond—I got scared at the thought of driving over it—but now I’ve got it draining the creek underneath is a rushing torrent—surprising—.”

LETTER TO ALLEN GINSBERG 1/28/73: “Allen DeLoach”: Buffalo-based poet and publisher of Intrepid magazine (1964–80).

“Gregory’s sudden poem”: “Proximity,” in Gregory Corso, Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit (New Directions, 1981), 26.

“John Wieners”: Famed Boston poet. Student at Black Mountain College.

“John Logan”: Poet who taught at SUNY -Buffalo.

“Mark Robison whom I saw late fall”: Allen Ginsberg, Ginsberg’s Improvised Poetics, edited with an introduction by Mark Robison (Anonym Press, 1971).

LETTER TO BOBBIE CREELEY (BOBBIE LOUISE HAWKINS) 1/29/73: “That’s wild about the kerosene”: Bobbie wrote to RC, 1/26/73: “Running out of gas while with Yvonne and Mickey, a friend accidentally mistakenly puts a can of kerosene in the car.”

LETTER TO KATE CREELEY 4/26/73: “very happily saw Arthur”: Painter and Bolinas friend Arthur Okamura. RC and Okamura collaborated on 1234567890 (Shambhala, 1971).

LETTER TO DIANE DI PRIMA 3/12/74: “At present am working on text”: RC, Mabel: A Story and Other Prose (Marion Boyars, 1976).

“sort of reverse side”: Loba began appearing in Diane Di Prima, Loba: Part 1 (Capra Press, 1973).

POSTCARD TO BARRETT WATTEN 12/13/74: “can you come out (Bolinas) over Xmas holidays?”: Watten notes in correspondence with the editors: “The invite led to one of the most memorable evenings of my young writing career. At the table were Bob, Bobbie, and Richard Brautigan, who celebrated a publisher’s advance by buying a shopping bag full of steaks. I was not eating much steak at the time. There was a ferocious conversation about the values of Kenneth Fearing as a writer, whom Brautigan liked and Creeley did not—leftism. But I remember Creeley waxing large about the Western subject—Hume and Locke. It was the like visiting the Grand Canyon.”

LETTER TO ALLEN GINSBERG 11/1/75: “Elsewise sad to miss meeting Bob Dylan”: See earlier, Donald Allen letter to RC, dated 1/19/66: “Did Bob Dylan stop by to see you? Spent a great evening with him and Allen and many other people and urged him to look you up on his way. What would you think of my adding him to the overhauled NAP I’m starting to work on?” [Stanford M0662]

LETTER TO MR. AND MRS. HILTON POWER (HELEN CREELEY) 3/16/76: “You sure came from a nice place, Hilton!”: Hilton Power married Helen Creeley in the 1960s.

“I heard from Russell Haley”: English novelist and poet who immigrated to New Zealand. Stephanie and Rachel are Hilton Power’s daughters from his first marriage.

LETTER TO BOBBIE CREELEY (BOBBIE LOUISE HAWKINS) 4/21/76: “I’ve written Martin Booth”: Organizer of the Cambridge Poetry Festival.

LETTER TO PENELOPE HIGHTON (PENELOPE CREELEY) 5/24/76: “great yellow Korean bicycle Benny left for me”: Benny Nadel, student friend from Harvard who lived in Buffalo. See also RC’s broadside, “For Benny and Sabina” (Samuel Charters/Portents, 1970). [CP I, 498].

“Letter from Michael Volkersberg re money”: Refers to New Zealand Student Association that cosponsored RC’s tour.

LETTER TO PENELOPE HIGHTON (PENELOPE CREELEY) 5/27/76: “Will also write Bruce and Linley”: Student Council members who organized RC’s reading tour.

LETTER TO PENELOPE HIGHTON (PENELOPE CREELEY) 5/27/76: “Trevor, etc.”: Organizer of RC’s reading tour in Welland.

LETTER TO ROBERT GRENIER 7/4/76: “Also saw Rick Fields briefly in NYC, likewise”: Naropa-based writer and editor.

LETTER TO DENISE LEVERTOV 11/17/76: “Most happy in that situation”: Charlotte Creeley, daughter of RC and his first wife, Ann MacKinnon.

LETTER TO PENELOPE HIGHTON (PENELOPE CREELEY) 11/21/76: “asked me if I’d had any movie offers for THE ISLAND”: The film adaptation of Dickey’s novel Deliverance (1970) came out in 1972.

“Norman Jeffares”: Author of numerous books on William Butler Yeats.

LETTER TO ROBERT GRENIER 11/24/76: “final word in this mess”: The publisher failed to credit Grenier as the editor of RC’s Selected Poems (Scribner’s, 1976).

“to put note in to the effect”: See RC’s letter to the editors in The American Poetry Review 6, no. 1 (1977): 47. The statement reads, “Robert Creeley wishes it known that the recent publication of his SELECTED POEMS by Charles Scribner’s Sons does not acknowledge the editor of the selection, Robert Grenier, and also makes substantial changes in the order in which the poems appear in each of the five sections. The text, therefore, has neither the approval of Mr. Grenier nor Mr. Creeley—and is solely the responsibility of its publisher.”

“Peter Freeman (that magazine”: Padan Aram, the Harvard-Radcliffe poetry magazine.

LETTER TO ROBERT DUNCAN 2/2/77: “New Directions planning to publish a first book”: RC, Hello: A Journal, February 29–May 3, 1976 (New Directions, 1978).

“he’s generously asked me to do a note”: RC’s introduction to R. B. Kitaj, Pictures/Bilder (Marlborough Fine Art, 1977). [CE, 402–406].

“Preoccupations thus, as ever”: See Human Clay, exhibition selected by R. B. Kitaj (Arts Council of Great Britain, 1976).

“just finished reading”: Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974).

LETTER TO ROBERT GRENIER 5/17/77: “Also talking of Byrd and Dowland”: Elizabethan composers William Byrd and John Dowland.

LETTER TO CHARLES BERNSTEIN 2/6/79: “Thanks very much for the copy of your book . . . e.g., ‘Soul Under’”: See “Soul Under,” in Charles Bernstein, Shade (Sun & Moon, 1978).

“to note books of interest to me recently”: Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein, editors of L = A = N = G = U = A = G = E magazine, asked readers to list “5 non-poetry books you’ve read in the last few years that have had a significant influence on your thinking or writing, OR, send us a list of one or two non-poetry books, along with a brief (up to one or two hundred word) description of why they have been useful or important to you.” Bernstein and Andrews letter to RC, dated 1/2/79. [Stanford M0662].

LETTER TO GEORGE BUTTERICK 4/12/79: “but I really was displaced by the extraordinary emphasis on FOR LOVE, as against the selections from subsequent work”: Butterick edited, with Donald Allen, The Postmoderns: The New American Poetry Revised (Grove Press, 1982).

LETTER TO JOHN TAGGART 6/12/79: “‘review’ over 800 pages and over forty years of work”: Likely refers to RC, “For L. Z.,” in “Tributes to Louis Zukofsky” section of New Directions 39 (1979): 151–53.

“Bill Spanos to send you a copy of Boundary 2”: Refers to the RC special issue of the journal Boundary 2 (1978).

“The issue on your own work”: Refers to the John Taggart special issue of Paper Air 2, no. 1 (1979).

“I did get DODEKA—and thank you”: John Taggart, Dodeka (Membrane Press, 1979).

LETTER TO JOHN TAGGART 7/3/80: “your sense that Louis had a decisive hand in the composition”: In a prior letter to Taggart, dated 6/25/80, RC cast doubt on Taggart’s sup positions about “A”-24: “As I understand you, your proposal is that Louis [Zukofsky] made the selections of texts used in A 24, and then Celia then set/arranged them with the Handel material? I just don’t see how that could have been the case, insofar as Louis would not be able to get the requisite ‘fits’ or congruences, since he was, by both Paul’s and Celia’s report, tone deaf and had no particular skill with such composition insofar as I know. So how would he have been able to get the five parts working together as you suggest? And could he choose them without a sense of how they would concur, etc etc.” RC closes the letter by saying that he has written to Celia Zukofsky about the matter.

LETTER TO STAN AND JANE BRAKHAGE 10/13/80: “we finally moved into this very pleasant house”: RC and family lived at Back Cottage 2, 388 Summer Street, Buffalo, NY, until May 1982.

LETTER TO STAN AND JANE BRAKHAGE 1/29/81: “I was able to ‘be there’ when he was born”: William Gabriel Creeley, born January 16, 1981.

LETTER TO CHARLES BERNSTEIN 1/5/82: “with suggestions as to texts you’d like to see dealt with”: American Book Review published several pieces by or about the Language poets during this time, including a multireview special feature called “Nonsyntactical Writing” in ABR 4, no. 6 (September–October 1982): 2–4.

“I just got a copy”: Refers to Open Letter, 5th ser. (Winter 1982), the L = A = N = G = U = A = G = E issue, edited by Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein.

“Frank Davey”: Editor of Open Letter in Toronto.

“Thanks (!) for the copy”: Charles Bernstein, Stigma (Station Hill, 1981).

LETTER TO ALLEN GINSBERG 11/14/82: “Sam Charters”: Historian of jazz and blues. Married to scholar Ann Charters.

“I’d use”: Charles Olson, Selected Writings, edited by RC (New Directions, 1966).

“particular essays . . . stuff collected in”: Charles Olson, Muthologos: The Collected Lectures & Interviews, two volumes, edited by George F. Butterick (Four Seasons Foundation, 1978–79).

“If Don Allen still has editions”: Charles Olson, Poetry and Truth: The Beloit Lectures and Poems, edited by George F. Butterick (Four Seasons Foundation, 1971).

LETTER TO ROBERT DUNCAN 1/18/83: “the generous plug—the back cover reads like an ultimate testimonial dinner”: The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley: 1945–1975 (University of California Press, 1982) features blurbs by William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, Edward Dorn, Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, Robert Duncan, Michael McClure, and John Ashbery.

“Chas told me, Ruth W/D/”: Ruth Witt-Diamant, founder of the San Francisco State Poetry Center.

“hope to get something moving in collaboration with pleasant French photographer now here (in Santa Fe), Bernard Plossu”: See RC’s memories of Plossu in “My New Mexico,” catalog essay for In Place (Albuquerque Museum, 1982). [CE, 440–46].

LETTER TO ALICE NOTLEY 7/5/83: “very sad news”: Poet Ted Berrigan, married to Notley, died on July 4, 1983.

LETTER TO ED AND JENNIFER DORN 10/9/83: “Curious place to be hanging out in”: RC’s artist residency in West Berlin sponsored by the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst.

“Ted Joans lives upstairs”: Beat poet.

LETTER TO DENISE LEVERTOV 2/1/84: “modest fund for kids from the depressed town (South Waldoboro)”: Resulted in the Sarah Creeley Prize for high school graduates to attend the University of Maine.

“Pen starts graduate work”: RC and family lived in Ithaca during 1984–85.

“Griselda continues”: Griselda Ohannessian, editor at New Directions.

LETTER TO JOHN TAGGART 11/3/84: “Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian were our charming hosts”: English professors at the University at Buffalo.

POSTCARD TO BARRETT WATTEN 11/23/84: “God your book is solid! In all respects”: Likely refers to Barrett Watten, Total Syntax (Southern Illinois University Press, 1984).

LETTER TO CARL RAKOSI 2/16/87: “heart-felt thanks for that generous book”: Carl Rakosi, The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi (National Poetry Foundation, 1986).

LETTER TO TOM CLARK 2/23/87: “To get to your several questions”: Clark was then writing the biography Charles Olson: The Allegory of a Poet’s Life (W. W. Norton, 1991). He also authored, with RC, Robert Creeley and the Genius of the American Common Place: Together with the Poet’s Own Autobiography (New Directions, 1993).

POSTCARD TO LESLIE SCALAPINO 3/6/88: “Many thanks for the handsome books by Ted Pearson and Rick London”: Scalapino had recently published Ted Pearson’s Catenary Odes (O Books, 1987) and Rick London’s Abjections: A Suite (O Books, 1988).

“to Finland for a year”: Refers to Senior Fulbright Professorship (see letters from Helsinki below).

LETTER TO SUSAN HOWE 9/25/88: “First couple of weeks I was writing a poem a minute, much like dog in new surroundings”: Likely refers to poems in the “Helsinki Window” section of Windows (New Directions, 1990).

“your Olson piece”: Susan Howe, “Where Should the Commander Be,” Writing 19 (November 1987): 3–20.

LETTER TO ROBERT GRENIER 12/18/88: “Another virtue of Worcester apropos”: Worcester Polytechnic Institute offered RC a professorship that would have required teaching only six weeks per year.

“beginning with Robert, then Neil Williams, then George, then Joel”: Refers to the then recent deaths of poet Robert Duncan, painter Neil Williams, poet-editor George Butterick, and poet Joel Oppenheimer.

LETTER TO HELEN (CREELEY) AND WAYNE POWER 3/12/89: “I was in Albany”: RC later served as New York State Poet.

“suite of 12 poems to go with pastels”: Francesco Clemente and RC collaborated on It / 64 pastels / 12 Poems (Bruno Bischofberger, 1989).

LETTER TO SUSAN HOWE 3/24/89: “It looks like we’re headed back”: Refers to communications with Provost (and later President) William Greiner that subsequently led to the formation of the Buffalo Poetics Program and RC’s appointment to the Capen Chair.

LETTER TO ALLEN GINSBERG 4/23/89: “even to read with the locals (Klaes Andersson et al)”: Claes Andersson, Finnish writer.

“spent weekend out with Massimo B/ et al”: Italian Pound scholar Massimo Bacigalupo.

LETTER TO ROBERT GRENIER 8/10/89: “We just heard yesterday mortgage was approved!”: Home at 64 Amherst Street (a former firehouse).

LETTER TO SUSAN HOWE 2/15/90: “chair went to”: Refers to the newly formed Buffalo Poetics Program.

“week in Israel”: Refers to writer’s conference held at Mishkenot Sha’ananim in Jerusalem. Miroslav Holub was a Czech poet.

LETTER TO SUSAN HOWE 3/17/90: “immensely useful”: “Talisman Interview, with Edward Foster,” in Susan Howe, The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History (Wesleyan University Press, 1993), 155–82.

“Peter was very good”: Peter Quartermain, English literary critic and poet.

LETTER TO CHARLES BERNSTEIN 3/31/90: “Tomaz Salamun, who is to be in the States in the fall”: Slovenian poet.

FAX TO CHARLES BERNSTEIN 8/21/90: “promo materials”: The Poetics Program reading series Wednesdays at 4 Plus.

“very happy news”: See letter to Susan Howe 2/15/90.

LETTER TO ROBERT GRENIER 6/4/91: “great speckled”: Poet David Bromige (1933–2009).

“When I’d finished the so-called selection”: Likely refers to Charles Olson, Selected Poems, edited by RC (University of California Press, 1993.)

“Like, if someone, namely ole B/”: Likely also refers to David Bromige.

FAX TO TOM THOMPSON, THE NATIONAL POETRY SERIES 5/18/92: “hardly an easy manuscript”: As the 1992 judge for the National Poetry Series, RC awarded the prize to Gerald Burns, Shorter Poems (Dalkey Archive, 1993).

LETTER TO WARREN TALLMAN 9/25/92: “your lovely book!”: Warren Tallman, In the Midst: Writings 1962–1992 (Talonbooks, 1992). Selections include “Statement on The Island” (21–22), “Haw: A Dream for Robert Creeley” (62–66), “Robert Creeley, LETTER” (198–201), and “Letter to Robert Creeley” (215).

“a little stretched”: Charles Bernstein commuted between Buffalo and his home in New York City.

“altogether benign baby”: Felix is the son of Charles Bernstein and Susan Bee.

“staying in Connecticut”: Refers to Susan Howe and her husband, David von Schlegell.

LETTER TO ERIC MOTTRAM 3/5/94: “Meantime Charles is seemingly surviving”: Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, Dennis Tedlock, and Robert (Bob) Bertholf were colleagues in the Buffalo Poetics Program. Charles commuted to Buffalo once a week from his home in Manhattan. Bertholf was then the curator of the Poetry Collection, the University at Buffalo.

LETTER TO JIM DINE 12/12/94: “have some fun, like they say”: Refers to their collaboration on RC, Pictures: Poem, with lithographs by Dine (Tamarind Institute, 2001).

“else I suppose the other way”: They previously collaborated on RC, Mabel, A Story: 1.2.3., 3.1.2., 2.3.1., 1.2.3., 3.1.2., with etchings by Dine (Éditions de l’Atelier Crommelynck, 1977).

FAX TO ELIZABETH FOX 1/26/95: “request of a Chinese publisher”: See The Pisan Cantos and Selected Essays of Ezra Pound, translated and edited by Yunte Huang (Lijiang Publishing House, 1998).

E-MAIL TO BENJAMIN FRIEDLANDER 4/10/95: “Don Allen called today to talk about the Olson Collected”: Friedlander co-edited, with Donald Allen, Olson’s Collected Prose (University of California Press, 1997).

E-MAIL TO PETER GIZZI AND ELIZABETH WILLIS 2/15/96: “a collaboration with Alex Katz”: Edges (Peter Blum Edition, 1999).

“gearing up for the Duncan fest”: Refers to Robert Duncan Conference: The Opening of the Field, April 19–21, 1996, State University of New York at Buffalo.

“so sadly insistent”: Franco Beltrametti died in August 1995. Larry Eigner and Lady Caroline (Lowell) Blackwood died in February 1996.

“your dissertation as and when”: Gizzi’s dissertation committee for the Buffalo Poetics Program consisted of RC, Charles Bernstein, and Susan Howe. It was published as Jack Spicer, The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer, ed. Peter Gizzi (Wesleyan University Press, 1998).

E-MAIL TO SIMON PETTET 10/11/96: “Only glitch”: Roi is Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones). Gil is Gilbert Sorrentino.

E-MAIL TO TOM RAWORTH [OCTOBER 1996]: “who collects trashy postcards”: Quoted from Jane Perlez, “Polish Poet, Observer of Daily Life, Wins Nobel,” New York Times, October 4, 1996, www.nytimes.com.

“with Georg Baselitz with whom I’ll do modest collaboration”: RC, Signs, with etchings by Georg Baselitz (Graphicstudio, 2000).

“Murray Edmond”: New Zealand poet.

LETTER TO MARJORIE PERLOFF [11/10/96]: “your very impressive book”: Marjorie Perloff, Wittgenstein’s Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary (University of Chicago Press, 1996).

“slim memoir”: Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir (Oxford University Press, 1958).

“happy company with Bruce Duffy at a writers’ business at Bennington”: Bruce Duffy, author of The World as I Found It (Ticknor & Fields, 1987), a fictionalized account of Wittgenstein’s life.

“GREAT to have Gil’s company”: Gilbert Sorrentino.

E-MAIL TO BENJAMIN FRIEDLANDER [4/7/97]: “Boldereff/Olson letters”: Charles Olson and Frances Boldereff: A Modern Correspondence, ed. Ralph Maud and Sharon Thesen (Wesleyan University Press, 1999).

E-MAIL TO BENJAMIN FRIEDLANDER [4/19/97]: “unlikely review”: Louis Zukofsky, “What I Come to Do Is Partial,” Poetry 92 (May 1958): 110–12.

“T-shirts will be ready”: Printed for Zukofsky in April conference, sponsored by Poetics Program, University at Buffalo in April 1997.

E-MAIL TO CHARLES BERNSTEIN [APRIL 1997]: “>Spent the morning with”: Ira Nadel spoke on a panel with Mark Scroggins and Paul Zukofsky for the Zukofsky in April conference.

LETTER TO DENNY MOERS 5/31/97: “we spoke of you doing a cover”: Denny Moers, photographer. His work appears on several RC books including Mirrors, Echoes, Windows, Life & Death, and If I Were Writing This.

“This neighborhood”: Blackrock in Buffalo.

LETTER TO WILLIAM WADSWORTH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS 2/21/99: “the book club”: Financially insolvent project that was discontinued a short time later.

E-MAIL TO BARRETT WATTEN 1/20/00: “impressively patient and clear take”: See Barrett Watten, “New Meaning and Poetic Vocabulary: From Coleridge to Jackson Mac Low,” Poetics Today 18 (Summer 1997): 147–86.

“My own relation to Basic English”: See letter to Larry Eigner [ca. February 1950].

LETTER TO SARAH CREELEY 8/2/00: “I’ve looked at your video”: Family home video.

LETTER TO FRANCESCO CLEMENTE 1/31/01: “I wrote this poem for Gregory . . .”: RC, “For Gregory Corso” [CP II, 589].

LETTER TO JOEL KUSZAI 2/13/01: “the Helsinki reading”: RC reading at the University of Helsinki, February 14, 1989. Recording available via PennSound www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Creeley.php.

LETTER TO HENRY REATH, PRESIDENT, BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS 10/1/01: “situation of the Chancellors”: RC was appointed chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1999. In the weeks leading up to this letter, the longtime executive director William Wadsworth was forced to resign under pressure by the organization’s board. See David D. Kirkpatrick, “Poets’ Group Ousts Chief, Igniting Ire of Members,” New York Times, November 7, 2001.

E-MAIL TO PENELOPE CREELEY 10/8/02: “Anne to Jane and Anselm”: Anne Waldman, Jane Hollo, and Anselm Hollo.

E-MAIL TO BARRETT WATTEN 7/9/03: “immaculately precise observation”: Refers to the line, “Hollow blocks fill up in windowless rooms: the train ceaselessly reinvents the station,” from Barrett Watten, “Real Estate,” in 1–10 (This Press, 1980), 32.

E-MAIL TO ROD SMITH 7/17/03: “the drear Faas biography”: Ekbert Faas, with Maria Trombacco, Robert Creeley: A Biography (University Press of New England, 2001).

LETTER TO CARL RAKOSI 9/22/03: “mine for your birthday”: Carl Rakosi, poet affiliated with the Objectivists, born in 1903.

“said ‘piece’ might be of use”: The poem, minus the note, appears in RC, “For Carl, Again & Again,” Jacket 25 (February 2004), www.jacketmagazine.com/25/rak-cree.html.

E-MAIL TO AMMIEL ALCALAY 12/1/03: “If the question is, did Olson either listen to or pick up on Charlie Parker during his (Parker’s) lifetime”: Alcalay relates that the question he put to Creeley was a query he had received from his then grad student, the poet Karen Weiser.

“olson quote i had asked you guys about”: Charles Olson, “On Black Mountain,” Maps 4 (1971): 31.

E-MAIL TO ANGELICA CLARK 5/17/04: “and we did get Tom’s NIGHT SKY”: Tom Clark, Night Sky (Deep Forest, 2004).

E-MAIL TO ANSELM BERRIGAN 6/17/04: “just that Steve played with him those many years ago”: Steve Lacy performed on Cecil Taylor’s debut recording, Jazz Advance (Transition, 1956) and several other Taylor recordings.

E-MAIL TO ANSELM BERRIGAN 1/4/05: “Pen had been talking to pleasant mail guy at local post office about Ted”: Ted Berrigan grew up in Providence, RI.

E-MAIL TO ANSELM BERRIGAN 1/5/05: “Meantime Irene emails to say”: Cellist and vocalist Irene Aebi, married to Steve Lacy and frequent collaborator.

E-MAIL TO ANSELM BERRIGAN 1/6/05: “GEORGE LEWIS will be one of the gang that evening”: George Lewis, composer, electronic performer, installation artist, trombone player, and scholar in the fields of improvisation and experimental music. Lewis has been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971.

“he has no problem with Rosswell, they are actually good friends & equally giants!”: Roswell Rudd, acclaimed jazz trombonist, longtime collaborator of Steve Lacy, Archie Shepp, and many others.

“the work you all put in on it makes it absolutely shine”: Ted Berrigan, Collected Poems, edited by Alice Notley with Anselm Berrigan and Edmund Berrigan (University of California Press, 2005).

E-MAIL TO LISA JARNOT 1/16/05: “obsessed with Whittier’s ‘Snowbound’”: John Greenleaf Whittier, “Snowbound: A Winter Idyl” (1865).

“Visually dominating Wilson’s vast lobby”: RC cites David Cohen, “Domes and Angles and a Palace of Projects,” Artnet (April 21, 1998).