Language
One of the biggest thematic threads in all of Creeley's work is language. His poems are constantly moving through events with words, trying to capture things as they are on the verge of occurring. This subject is tackled in the poem "The Language." The speaker of the poem is unable to fully express the meaning of the phrase "I love you" but tries to do so over the course of the poem: "I / love you / again, / then what / is emptiness / for. To / fill, fill. / I heard words / and words full / of holes / aching. Speech / is a mouth." He is attempting to find a fitting descriptor for this feeling while seeing the inadequacy of his words. The poem is not a romantic ode; it is a writer working over language, trying to piece together something that works. Here, Creeley comes off like a painter with "rough" brushstrokes, writing in a way that makes the process visible while still making careful use of his craft.
Another poem that engages with this theme is "The Answer." Here, Creeley describes the imprecise awkwardness of human communication in comparison to the grace of nature. He uses the image of a blade of grass bending in the wind to highlight this idea. He ends the poem with a rather forlorn depiction of this lack: "We break things into pieces like / walls we break ourselves into / hearing them fall just to hear it." In these poems, Creeley characterizes language as too fragmented to ever actually get to the heart of the subject. At the same time, he recognizes the need (as the speaker of "The Language" demonstrates) to make the effort and piece together words.
Art
Another major theme in a number of Creeley's works is art. Creeley does not always make reference to other writers, but when he does, he is frequently offering commentary. In the following example, he is commenting on how he thinks art should be made and what ends it should be serving. In the poem, "Heroes," he alludes to Virgil's Aeneid and takes issue with the way Aeneas is largely characterized as unreachable and inhuman. He even challenges Virgil's authority with the lines, "That was the Cumaean Sibyl speaking. / This is Robert Creeley, and Virgil / is dead now two thousand years." Here, he suggests that Virgil's approach to the composition of verse was impressive, but is now very outdated. In moments like these, Creeley uses artistic touchstones as a way to discuss the creation of different works.
Love
Another core theme of Creeley's work is love. Creeley often dealt with relationships in his writing and depicted scenes from domestic life. As such, a number of his poems actively engage with the meaning of love and the way in which people demonstrate it to each other. In the poem "For Love," the speaker, who is clearly Creeley, tries to find the right words to explain what his wife means to him. The following stanzas showcase both his devotion to her and frustrated efforts: "Love, what do I think / to say. I cannot say it. / What have you become to ask, / what have I made you into, / companion, good company, / crossed legs with skirt, or / soft body under / the bones of the bed." He tries out different images from different contexts in the hope that one of them will fit. In Creeley's poetry, love is an essential, everyday thing but also remains deeply mysterious. As evidenced through his speakers, he finds it too big to nail down exactly, but he tries anyway.
Meaning
Related to the theme of language, another significant part of Creeley's work is meaning. While his speakers are often preoccupied with their words, they are equally concerned with finding meaning in their lives. While this may seem like an abstract concept, Creeley always manages to make it feel immediate and direct. In the poem "Names," the speaker describes the public's failure to understand Marilyn Monroe. The title is a joking reference to the fact that Monroe's name was originally Norma Jean, suggesting that neither of these names ever really explained who she was. The speaker states this idea plainly in the poem's second half: "She married heroes of all kinds / but no one seemed to know her mind, / none the secret key could find. / Scared kid, Norma Jean? / Are things really what they seem? / What is it that beauty means?" The speaker feels that no one was able to successfully understand her "meaning" as an individual because they were so caught up in the surface glamor of her life.
Emptiness
In his most famous poem, "I Know a Man," Creeley writes about the themes of emptiness and despair. This would prove to be a recurring idea in his work. His talkative speaker confides in his friend that he is anxious about the "darkness" in the world that he believes "surrounds" them. He mentions this because he is trying to find some means of acting "against" it. While the speaker never specifies exactly what the "darkness" is, the reader gets the general impression that it is the hollowness of his own life coupled with what he finds objectionable in the world. It is, in the view of the poem, a general looming despair, a sense of emptiness that the speaker cannot escape. As the speaker's companion tells him to just drive this feeling only deepens. Creeley has the speaker come up against this emptiness, only to be offered a thoughtless solution. It highlights some of the darkness that Creeley himself saw in his contemporary society.
Grief
Another theme in Creeley's work is grief. In "The World," the speaker attempts to provide solace and reassurance to his wife. While the source of her pain remains initially unseen, the poem reveals it in its middle section. The speaker's wife has recently suffered the loss of her troubled brother. The poem materializes her brother as a ghostly "grey figure" that looms over the speaker's bed, causing the speaker's wife to grow "restless." But the speaker succeeds in chasing the figure off: "I tried to say, it is / all right, she is / happy, you are no longer / needed. I said, / he is dead, and he / went as you shifted." While this encounter is described in a supernatural way, it feels like a very natural extension of the grief process. The speaker is trying to help his wife move on from this painful loss and let go of this spectral figure that is coming between them. Creeley uses this unnerving nighttime scene to show how grief can impact people and how they try to move beyond it.
Identity
Identity is another recurring theme in a number of Creeley's poems. His characters are often seeking to define themselves in relation to a role or characteristic. In the example of "The World," the speaker is trying to be a loving and supportive husband. But he feels that he is failing to do so: "I wanted so ably / to reassure you, I wanted / the man you took to be me, / to comfort you, and got / up, and went to the window, / pushed back, as you asked me to." In this early moment, he sees himself not being the man his wife initially thought he was. In a small moment of care, he opens the curtains to let his wife see the outside world. The speaker of the poem is continually viewing his identity in relation to the person he thinks he should be and the domestic role he is supposed to fulfill. Creeley's characters often are trying to sort out their identities in contexts like this, seeing a gap between the person who they feel they are and who they want to be.
