Subjectivity and Contact in the Early Poetry of Robert Creeley

Abstract

The article deals with the topics and problematics of communication in the works of American poet Robert Creeley (1926-2005). The inter-subject relations, which he studies under the microscope of linguistic reflection, seem to be a factor of self-creation, and sometimes selfdestruction of the subject. Creeley is at the epicenter of a dramatic clash of different aesthetic means: the closed form of Eliot's verse, the open form of confessionary poets, the experimentalism of «objectivists» (Ch. Olson), and the emerging, new formalism of «language poetry». Creeley’s poetry is an attempt to explore subjective experience simultaneously revealing objective, universal models in it. Experience is transmitted through the use of sensory parallels and – becomes understandable to the reader in light of their own, similar experience. Verbal «common places», abstractions, clichéd wording turned into points of such mutual projections. The reader is to fill these lacunas; as a result, the «common places» of speech become places of special intimacy of contact, mutual understanding on the basis of the untold and freedom from literalization.