Robert Creeley’s born digital writings remembering friends and colleagues

Article

January 27, 2026 | Al Bersch

Robert Creeley sitting at a desk in front of a laptop taken through the window of a house. — Photograph of Robert Creeley. Robert Creeley papers, 1950-2005. Stanford University.

For the past two years I’ve had the pleasure of processing the born digital archives of the poet Robert Creeley (1926-2005). Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this project provided the opportunity to give significant attention to computer media from the Robert Creeley papers containing writings, correspondence, images, and audiovisual files created during Creeley’s later years.

Known for his affiliation with Black Mountain College and the Beat generation, Creeley was also an editor and a teacher, and often worked on creative projects in close collaboration with other writers, visual artists, and musicians. The many creative relationships Creeley developed and maintained over his life are evidenced in the word processing and text files saved to his computers and computer media. In his correspondence as well as in his prose and short stories, involvement with and interconnection with an international network of writers and artists is a common theme. Collaborative work with artists (John Chamberlain, Larry Bell, Graham Dean, Elsa Dorfman), and musicians (Steve Lacy, Steve Swallow) is sprinkled throughout folders where he organized his work and referenced in his letters.

I started by reviewing the most recent computer files in the collection – stored on the laptops, desktop, and external hard drive Creeley used in the last five years of his life, including the laptop he had with him during a residency in Marfa, Texas, at the time of his death. From 2000 to 2005, Creeley’s poetry and prose takes a reflective stance. As Creeley aged, so did his colleagues. Among his writings are numerous essays remembering friends and colleagues who had passed. Included in these are obituaries published in newspapers and journals, as well as eulogies delivered at memorial services and poetry readings. Some essays were written as introductions to post-humus publications or biographies, and take a more formal tone. The number as well as the loving nature of these writings, many of which have not yet been published, is striking. In his letters to friends in 2002 and 2003, as he prepared to leave Buffalo in a move to Brown University, Creeley writes of the toll of saying goodbye to so many friends.

Through these remembrances, Creeley illustrates the subjects’ lives through personal anecdotes and segments of poetry. One has the sense of getting a snapshot into not just the life of the individual, but of the relationship and dynamic they may have shared with Creeley. As a group, the writings paint a picture of what Creeley may have been as a friend, and lay witness to the influence of these writers and artists on his own life and work.

Gregory Corso's grave, with a brown tabby cat sitting next to the gravestone. — Photograph of Gregory Corso’s grave. Robert Creeley papers, 1950-2005. Stanford University.

Creeley’s writings remembering the following friends and colleagues are now viewable online.

Donald Allen
Paul Blackburn
Ric Caddel
Walter Chappell
Leo Connellan
Gregory Corso
Fielding Dawson
Fred Eckman
Leslie Fiedler
Allen Ginsberg
Robert Graves
Ernst Jandl
Jack Kerouac
Steve Lacy
James Laughlin
Denise Levertov
John Linsley
Robert Lowell
Mina Loy
Charles Olson
Simon Pettet
Helen Power
Mendell Sachs
Warren Tallman
Stefan Wolpe
Louis Zukofsky