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Robert Creeley

American poet (1926-2005)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ918620 ↗
Source-derived summary

Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than 60 books. He is associated with the Black Mountain poets, although his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. Creeley was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn.

Creeley served as the Samuel P. Capen Professor of Poetry and the Humanities at State University of New York at Buffalo. In 1991, he joined colleagues Susan Howe, Charles Bernstein, Raymond Federman, Robert Bertholf, and Dennis Tedlock in founding the Poetics Program at Buffalo.

Creeley lived in Waldoboro, Buffalo, and Providence, where he taught at Brown University. He was a recipient of the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.

Early life

Creeley was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, and grew up in Acton. He and his sister, Helen, were raised by their mother. At the age of two, he lost his left eye.

Editorial summary

“Robert Creeley” enters the record as american poet (1926-2005). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Robert, Creeley and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1926, 2005, 1991—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1926-05-21. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Robert, Creeley and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Robert Creeley” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Robert, Creeley and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q918620. VIAF identifies the subject as 109562114. The Library of Congress control number is n79043504. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1926, 2005 and 1991.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Robert Creeley”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Robert Creeley primary sources, Robert Creeley archive and Robert research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Robert Creeley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.