The epigraph to Later, Robert Creeley’s second book of poems published by New Directions, enjoins the reader to “hold in mind/ All that has loved you or been kind.” This commitment to the continuity of life on a fragile planet, limited by both time and space, has become increasingly important to a poet who, “if older,” takes a certain pride in knowing the boundaries of the possible.
Where his 1978 verse journal Hello chronicled an actual journey (to New Zealand, Australia, and the Far East), Later deals with an interior exploration rooted in everyday sights and sounds––the play of light and shadow through a window, the lap of waves on a beach. Past occurrences and expectations are reconciled with an acceptance of inevitable change, and in the poignant title sequence Creeley marvels, “but now the wonder of life is/ that it is at all.”
