On Robert Creeley’s Poetic Language

Robert Creeley (1926-2005) is one of the most prominent poets in American poetry,who is one of the chief representatives of Projective Poetry or a forerunner of LanguagePoetry. In his poetry, he pays much attention to language and its form, and offers his ownunique and insightful thinking of poetic language, which enriches poetic language. Byproviding an analysis of the self-sufficiency of language, the relationship between form andcentent, and the impact of Creeley’s poetic language in Creeley’s collected poems from1945to1975, the thesis aims to explore Creeley’s special ideas of poetic language and the greatinfluences of his poetic language.The paper firstly analyzes the self-sufficiency of language. Words do not necessarilyrefer to things, instead, they can be self-referential. In Creeley’s poems, he delays the nexusbetween language and the signified by hiding the action in words or delaying its appearance.And then words are things, so they carry certain effect and can do things. Through this effect,Creeley brings the reader to the site where the thing happens, representing the pieces of reality,so as to highlight the substance of language. Besides, Creeley insists that language “form isnever more than the extension of content.” He opposes the traditional idea that form is theprevious occasion of content. In his poetry, form is determined by content, meanwhile, formcomes into existence as the content spreads out. And then form is the presence of anything,that’s to say, form cannot separate from content and appears naturally an extension of content.In fact, form is what happens at the site. Finally the thesis discusses the impact of Creeley’spoetic language on Projective Poetry and Language Poetry. Olson uses Creeley’s poetics ofform as the core principle of his “Projective Verse”. And then on basis of Creeley’s ideas onpoetic language, the Language Poetry has been exploring self-sufficiency of language and putlanguage onto the extreme of self-performance. Creeley’s idea of poetic creation has not onlylaid the foundation for the following poets’ writing innovations, but also helped to bring aboutthe flourishing of Language Poetry.In conclusion, the poetic diction and form is the prominent idiosyncrasy of Creeley’spoetry and also offers a new perspective of Creeley studies. His pioneering ideas and practicesin poetic language have pushed the development and prosperity of the Projective Poetry and Language Poetry, and made an indelible contribution to the development of contemporarypoetry.