Creeley Improvisations

The poet Robert Creeley is such an excellent minimalist that I almost get upset when he writes poems with somewhat conventional line lengths. Halfway through Just In Time: Poems 1984-1994 Creeley unleashes (maybe not the proper word for poems so spare and wry and minute, but whatever) a several-page-long sequence of what he calls "improvisations," which hit the Creeley sweet spot. Here are a few.

YOU BET

Birds like
windows.

YONDER

Heaven's up
there still.

NEGATIVE

There's a big
hole.

SITE

Slats in
sunlight
a shadow.

CARS

Flat out
parking lot.

TEXAS REVERSE

You all
go.

HELP

This here
hand's out.

DOWN

It's all 
over
the floor.

DAYTIME

It's got to be
lighter.