Creeley Imitation Poem

Your writing assignment has two parts: part 1 is to write a poem, part 2 is to comment on other's poems.

Pick a poem that you like. Give us the poem title and page number. (It can be any poem in the book.) Then write a poem that imitates Creeley's style and his poetics. Pay particular attention to imitating his use of line and syntax.

Some of you may feel comfortable writing a poem, some of you may not. Don't stress out. Relax, jump in, and let yourself take some risks. The idea here isn't to write a "good" poem. (If that happens, so much the better, but don't worry about it. Instead, the idea is to gain insight into his poems through the experience of writing in his style.

Be sure to read, and comment on, everyone's poems. We want this Blog to be a support space where we can talk with one another.

Here is an example of another poet writing an imitation poem. This is a poem by William Carlos Williams. Williams is a generation older than Creeley, and Williams was one of Creeley's important influences. You can probably see the similarity in their style. And here is a series of imitations of Williams written by another poet, Kenneth Koch. Koch is Creeley's generation, and one of his friends.