Creeley Lives!

In this fast growing but ultimately isolated city, Perth, poetry CDs are a rare item in mainstream shops. In this city's suburb of Mt Lawley there is a very popular video store Planet Video which has expanded vigorously in past years and now sports CD sales, DVD sales, and Planet Books, which has perhaps the best poetry selection of any bookstore in Perth.

Long story short, I was in there yesterday, doing some last minute Christmas shopping, when I stumbled across the above CD - Robert Creeley with Steve Swallow. Of course, there isn't enough Creeley for my taste, but he was a minimalist poet, so I suppose a minimal amount of poetry spoken in Creeley's unique style would represent his work well.

I once had the honour of spending time with Creeley here in Perth, and heard him read. He was a generous man with his time and with his information, so this CD brings back great memories for me, besides being a great enforcer of the tone of his poems in The Collected Poems of RC which I have from the University of California Press, 1982.

Here is a short quote from the end of a review in All About Jazz http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=23904 which expresses my basic reaction to this CD:

Poets look askance (as did Shelley all that time ago in “Ozymandias”) at claims regarding the permanence of human creation. Perhaps; but on this record, Robert Creeley is still speaking, and thanks to Swallow’s musical contribution, we can hear him a little better than we otherwise might.



Tracks: Oh No; Names; Here Again; Ambition; Indians; From Histoire De Florida; Sufi Sam Christian; Later; From Wellington, New Zealand / From Eight Plus; Miles; Just In Time; Return; Echo; Sad Advice; Riddle; Blue Moon; I Know A Man; A Valentine For Pen.


Personnel: Steve Swallow: bass; Robert Creeley: voice; Steve Kuhn: piano; The Cikada String Quartet: Henrik Hannisdal: violin; Odd Hannisdal: violin; Marek Konstantynowicz: viola; Morten Hannisdal: cello.