There are two ways of reading Creeley. One is to isolate the top 10% of his poems and read them over and over again. The other is to wade through everything, the poems apparently too slight or too diffuse, to realize that the other 90% has real value. I've been preferring the second approach lately.

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I had an idea for a project: writing a book about 15 poems that I would select by the following criteria:

maximum of 10 could be American
" " could be written originally in English
" " could be written by men
" " could be written in 20th century etc...

in order to counteract my own 20th century, male, English-speaking, American bias, yet still have things weighted toward my own sensibility.

I would write 15 pages about each poem. I thought of something Ron said on recent Kansan visit: he's more interested in poetry than in the poem. For me it depends on what side of the bed I get up on. Sometimes I'm much more interested in the poem than in poetry. We need a counterweight to anthologies like One Hundred Old Chestnuts You Ought to Have Already Read

So far my list:

Frost "The Silken Tent"
Coolidge. something from My Face ?
Frank O'Hara, "Poetry"
James Schuyler "Standing and Watching"

Basho, et al. "Through the Town..."
Guest "Gravel"
Catullus ????
Claudio Rodríguez "La encina... ."
Blanca Varela ????
Emily "We Grow Accostumed to the Dark"