CREELEYFEST

We're coming to the end of Creeleyfest on the Mimeo Mimeo blog, so here's the grand finale.

Edges, a collaboration with Alex Katz published by Peter Blum Editions (1999). A classic collaboration featuring a healthy serving of lithographs bound in handsome cloth covered boards.

En Famille, a collaboration with Elsa Dorfman published by Granary Books (1999).

In Company, an exhibition catalog focusing on Creeley's collaborations with artists, was published in 1999. Includes CD-Rom. Perhaps my favorite essay by John Yau is included in this volume, lavishly illustrated with color reproductions. Statements by Creeley's collaborators are priceless. Essential reading.

 Susan Rothenberg: Paintings from the Nineties, published by Rizzolli International (2000).

 Thinking was published by Kenward Elmslie's Z Press in Calais, Vermont (2000). Includes a beautiful print by Alex Katz with production by the Grenfell Press. Creeley received a box of 'seconds' where the color of the print was rejected by Katz, which he signed and passed on to me one afternoon at his firehouse in Buffalo.

Drawn & Quartered, a collaboration with Archie Rand (Granary Books, 2001) was described by Creeley: "The procedure was for Archie to slide me an image on the litho paper. I"d try a take or two to get the feel, writing on a usual sheet of typing paper, then resolve on a particular quatrain, put it with the litho sheet related--and on to the next. So we worked through the afternoon until, finally, all fifty-four poems were finished. Then I copied each poem under its respective image on the litho sheet....I felt as if I had been in some fantastic traffic of narratives, all the echoes and presences and situations--like very real life indeed. I loved the almost baroque feel of the drawings, the echo of old-time illustrations and children"s books. Whatever, Archie"s sure got me. The rest you can judge for yourself."

I don't know what I could say about Ekbert Fass' Robert Creeley: A Biography that hasn't been said before. Creeley thought so little of the book, it wasn't until 2008 or so that I made a decision to put his opinion aside and find out for myself. It was worse than I had imagined: an utter waste, the author an embarrassment to scholarship itself.

Derek Beaulieu was kind enough to send me a signed copy of Just in Time the other day. Although I appreciate the gesture enormously, I was disappointed to discover that the book was so poorly edited (many typos) and the design abominable. New Directions usually does much better than this.

A sweet little chapbook from Charles Alexander's Chax Press (2002). Covers were printed letterpress with offset text bound by hand. As I recall, these were prepared for a reading by Creeley in Tucson. Bob told me that there was some sort of problem with some copies, bound upside down or missing pages (which I'm sure Charles fixed promptly).

If I Were Writing This was published by New Directions in 2003. My copy has black thumbprints on pages 64 and 65 from the day I typeset "Place to Be" in 18pt. Cochin for a Just Buffalo Literary Center broadside fundraiser. There's a picture of it here.

When Creeley died in 2005, my mom kindly went to his office at Brown to pick up a stack of broadsides, an elegy for Ed Dorn, that he had signed for me. You can see them here. I believe Gale Nelson of Paradigm Press was the one who met her there and gave her a copy of Caves.

On Earth was published posthumously by the University of California Press in 2006. Includes a hear-breaking essay on Whitman. Cover by Francesco Clemente.

Creeley by Mark Jay Mirsky (Pressed Wafer, 2007) with cover by Derek Fenner. Terrific essay.

An interview with Creeley conducted by Brent Cunningham in 1998, published by Hooke Press in 2007.

Robert Creeley: Selected Poems, 1945-2005 edited by Benjamin Friedlander and published by the University of California Press in 1008. Generally, I don't like 'selected poems' unless I'm interested in the editer, and in this case, having most of the work in other editions, I was delighted by Friedlander's decisions, beautifully framed by his Introduction.

Thanks for tuning in! Now, back to our regularly scheduled program, already in process....

Kyle Schlesinger