In the Process

"[Robert] Creeley's first principle is that you find out what you have to say in the process of saying it: poetry becomes a way of making not representing. This presents a stark challenge to an approach to poems that begins with ideas or sentiments or messages and then represents or approximates them in the poem. Composition (including editing and recomposing) becomes the active agency of the poem. Immediacy and immanence of expression precedes essence."
~ Charles Bernstein, "Hero of the Local: Robert Creeley and the Persistence of American Poetry"

.OOOOOOO.

"The poet thinks with his poem, in that lies his thought, and that in itself is the profundity."
~ William Carlos Williams, cited by Creeley in "The Release" (The Collected Essays of Robert Creeley)