The Great Lost Bob Creeley Bluegrass Record

Back in the mid-1990s, my work took me all over New York State. One bright winter day, driving through Altamont, I had the radio tuned to the University of Albany station. A folk show. The signal flickered in and out as the DJ came on mike to "back-announce" the set he'd played. "That was kah-kah Bob-kah-Creeley-kah-kah Bluegrass Band...." Had I heard correctly? There was no way to call the station. Internet playlists didn't exist yet. And I returned to Providence wondering if Robert Creeley had made a bluegrass record.

Five Rivers Environmental Center, Albany County
(Courtesy: New York State DEP)

Was this is before or after I found the "I Saw Delight (Homage to Hank Williams)" bumpersticker? Can't remember. In any case, I've never found any evidence that Creeley made a bluegrass record. Except that, tantalizingly, according to Tom Clark's Robert Creeley and the Genius of the American Common Place, as a child he did want to play banjo and eventually studied mandolin and violin.

When you look at some of the poems, though, especially those titled "Song," you begin to think, damned if he didn't take apart a country song and put it back together as a Robert Creeley poem. Take this one, for instance, from For Love. It's not hard to put the image of a window opening and a door closing comes (back) into a country song, nor the refrain: "See the sun but won't look back."

Song

How simply
     for another
pace the virtues,
     peace and goodwill.

Sing pleasure,
     the window's opening,
unseen back of it
    the door closes.

How peace, how happiness,
    locked as insistence,
force weather, see sun,
    and won't look back.