Echoes

In his new collection of poems, Robert Creeley continues to explore the limits and resonances, public and personal, of age. Indeed, the title itself, Echoes, recurs throughout his poetry of the last two decades. Thus "Sonnets" speaks out against the waste of human violence and dogmatism ("Come round again the banal/belligerence almost a/flatulent echo of times"), while the book's closing sequence, "Roman Sketchbook," contemplates with wit and affection the measure of one's literal body in echoing time and place. Creeley as ever articulates the givens of life, its daily fact and possibility, with careful, concise invention. . What wind's echo, uplifted spirit? Archaic feelings flood the body. Ah! accomplished.