http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf7b69n911 Online items available Guide to the Robert Creeley Papers, 1950-2011 M0662 Machine-readable finding aid created by Stephan Potchatek and Steven Mandeville-Gamble; Diana Kohnke. Department of Special Collections and University Archives 1998 Green Library 557 Escondido Mall Stanford 94305-6064 [email protected] URL: http://library.stanford.edu/spc Guide to the Robert Creeley M0662 1 Papers, 1950-2011 M0662 Language of Material: English Contributing Institution: Department of Special Collections and University Archives Title: Robert Creeley papers creator: Creeley, Robert, 1926-2005 Identifier/Call Number: M0662 Physical Description: 443.5 Linear Feet(612 boxes, 3 cartons, 32 flat boxes, 1 oversize box, 2 cassette boxes; 55 audiocassettes, 16 reel to reel cassettes, 16 sound discs, 2 videocassettes, 4 film reels.) Date (inclusive): 1950-1997 For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog. 1926 Robert White Creeley born in Arlington, Massachusetts, May 21 to Oscar Slate and Genevieve Jules Creeley 1928 Left eye injured in accident 1930 Father died. Family moves to West Acton 1940 Entered Holderness School 1943 Entered Harvard College 1944-1945 Served in the American Field Service in India and Burma 1945 Returned to Harvard 1946 First published poem. Married Ann MacKinnon. 1947 Left Harvard without a degree 1948 Son David born 1948-1951 Lived in Littleton, NH where he bred pigeons 1950 Son Thomas born. Began correspondence with Charles Olson. Became American editor for Ranier Gerhardt's Fragmente 1951 Lived outside Aix-en-Province, France 1952 Daughter Charlotte born. Published Le Fou, his first book of poems. Moved to Majorca to establish Divers Press 1953 The Kind of Act of [poems] The Immoral Proposition [poems] 1954 The Gold Diggers [short stories] Taught at Black Mountain College First issue of Black Mountain Review, edited by Creeley, published in March 1955 Divorced from Ann MacKinnon All that is lovely in men [poems] 1956 Left Black Mountain College. If you [poems] Visited San Francisco Moves to Albuquerque Receives B.A. from Black Mountain College 1957 Married Bobbie Hall The Whip [collection of poems] Daughter Sarah born 1959 Daughter Katherine Williams born Moved to Guatemala A Form of Women [poems] 1960 Received M.A. from University of New Mexico Received Levinson Prize Included in The New American Peotry : 1945-1960 1961 Instructor at University of New Mexico 1962 For Love : Poems 1950-1960 Instructor at University of British Columbia 1963 Moved to Placitas, NM Vancouver Poetry Festival The Island [novel] 1964 Received Guggenheim Fellowship Received Oscar Blumenthal Prize 1965 Berkeley Poetry Conference The Gold Diggers and other stories [short stories] Edited with Donald Allen New American Story Words [poems] Received Rockefeller Grant 1966 National Educational Television Film, "Poetry : Robert Creeley" 1966-1970 Visiting Professor at State University of New York, Buffalo 1967 Words [poems] Edited with Donald Allen The New Writing in the USA Colloborated with R.B. Kitaj on A Sight Robert Creeley Reads [recorded reading] 1967-presentNamed Professor of English at SUNY, Buffalo 1968 Taught at University of New Mexico The Finger [poems] Numbers [poems] 1969 Pieces [poems] The Charm [poems] 1970 Moved to Bolinas, CA Taught at San Francisco State University A Quick Graph : Collected Notes & Essays [criticism] 1972 A Day Book [journal and poems] Listen [a radio play] 1973 Edited Whitman: Selected Poems Moved to Buffalo His Idea [poems] 1974 Thirty Things [poems] 1976 Presences : a text for Marisol [prose] Away [poems] Selected Poems Divorced Bobbie Hall Creeley 1977 Married Penelope Highton 1978 Boundary 2 published a double issue called Robert Creeley : A Gathering Guide to the Robert Creeley M0662 2 Papers, 1950-2011 M0662 1979 Later [poems] 1980 First volume of Charles Olson and Robert Creeley : The Complete Correspondence published by Black Sparrow Press 1981 Son William born Awarded Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America 1982 NEA Grant 1983 Daughter Hannah born Hello : a journal [poems] DAAD Fellowship in Berlin 1984 Appointed David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters, SUNY Buffalo 1985 Awarded Leone d'Oro Premio Speziale, Venice 1987 2nd DAAD Fellowship in Berlin Awarded Frost Medal by Poetry Society of America 1988 Robert Creeley's Life and Work published Received Distinguished Fulbright Award as Bicentennial Chair in American Studies, Helsinki University 1989-1991 New York State Poet 1990 Named Capen Professor of Poetry and Humanities, SUNY Buffalo 1991 Autobiography [essay] 1993 Tom Clark's Robert Creeley and the Genius of the American Common Place published Received Horst Bienek Lyrikpreis from Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts Tales out of School : Selected Interviews 1994 Echoes [poems] 1995 Loops : Ten Poems Processing information Note Processed by Stephan J. Potchatek, Polly Armstrong, and Special Collections staff; Accession 2011-036 processed by Diana Kohnke. Scope and Content The Robert Creeley Papers document the life work of a leading American poet of the 20th century, one of the core members of the "Black Mountain School." They also document several important movements in American poetics in the second half of the century. The papers include Creeley's personal and professional correspondence, journals, business records, personal mementos, clippings, artwork, and other documents generated and collected by him from 1950 to 1997. The papers are divided into 15 series: 1. Correspondence; 2. Manuscripts by Creeley; 3. Manuscripts by others; 4. Business records; 5. Black Mountain Review / Divers Press Editor Files; 6. Academic records and teaching materials; 7. Interviews; 8. Announcements; 9. Memorabilia; 10.Photographs and Artwork; 11. Publications; 12. Audiovisual Materials; 13. Born-Digital materials; 14. Creeley Family Ephemera; and 15. Oversize Materials. Wherever Creeley's original arrangement of materials was encountered, his order has been respected. However, in certain instances when the papers arrived without any clear indication of Creeley's own intellectual organization for those papers, it was necessary to divine what we think is the most appropriate intellectual arrangement for the papers. Stanford University Libraries has essayed to organize the papers in the schema of earlier intellectual organizations, especially that established at Washington University, St. Louis, where many of these papers were previously stored. Too, where no clear provenance for individual documents can be determined, we have attempted to find an organizational schema which will be most useful for researchers and scholars. Series 13, Born-Digital Materials (acquired in 2005 and 2011), consists of two sub-series: 2005-341 and 2011-036. Email is part of the first accession in 2005 and is available in the department's reading room; correspondents and extracted entities (personal and corporate names and locations) from Creeley's email have been published in Stanford's online discovery module: http://epadd.stanford.edu/epadd/collections. Born-digital materials received in 2011 are CLOSED until fully screened and processed. Series 16, accession 2005-348, consists of one box of photocopies of correspondence. The materials in Series 17, accession 2011-036, are divided into 16 subseries and consist of correspondence, manuscripts by Creeley, manuscripts by others, materials relating to various works written by Creeley, miscellaneous ephemera, photographs, printed matter, audiovisual materials and computer files. Series 18 consists of miscellaneous correspondence and ephemera removed from the books in Robert Creeley's library. Biographical note Recognized as a seminal figure of American letters in the second half of the 20th century, Robert White Creeley was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, on May 21, 1926, attended the Holderness School and then Harvard College. He received degrees from The Black Mountain College (B.A., 1956) and the University of New Mexico (M.A., 1960). After serving as an ambulance driver for the American Field Service in India and Burma, then living for a year outside Aix-en-Provence, France, Creeley moved in 1952 to Mallorca, where he founded and edited the Divers Press. Upon his return to the United States and at the invitation of Charles Olson, Creeley moved to North Carolina where he joined the Guide to the Robert Creeley M0662 3 Papers, 1950-2011 M0662 faculty of the Black Mountain College and edited the short-lived but highly influential journal, The Black Mountain Review (1954 -1957). Though he left the college in 1955, Creeley had already established himself as one of the leading figures of the literary avant-garde of the 1950s, establishing with Charles Olson the "Black Mountain School,"one of the most important movements in American letters, the foundation of Projective Verse, a break from the New Criticism and its "insistence on form as extrensic to the poem. He is notable for having established a lasting association with his literary mentors-Pound, Williams, Zukofsky, Bunting, and Dahlberg, among others-as well as those poets, writers and visual artists associated with the experimental arts of Black Mountain and the 1950s avant-garde. Among these are Paul Blackburn, John Chamberlain, Francisco Clemente, Cid Corman, Fielding Dawson, Jim Dine, Elsa Dorfman, Ed Dorn, Robert Duncan, Robert Indiana, R.B. Kitaj, Denise Levertov, Marisol, and especially Charles