Projective Verse

"form is never more than an extension of content" (Olson/Creeley; Projective Verse; Creeley DLB)

Form and Typewriter

"the HEAD, by way of the EAR, to the SYLLABLE" and from "the HEART, by way of the BREATH, to the LINE." (Projective Verse, Creeley DLB)

Open Field; exploration; process

What was objectionable was the "assumption of a mold, of a means that could be gained beyond the literal fact of the writing here and now, that had authority." Projectivism was not meant as a defining style for any single poet but recognized "that writing could be an intensely specific revelation of one's own content, and of the world the fact of any life must engage." (Creeley DLB)

Measure: as response, not imposition of form; also see music

As he commented in Berkeley in 1965, "measure" is for Creeley "the actual measure of the speech, the way the words are going ... the topography or actual ground, in no metaphoric sense, of where it is one is moving.... In other words, how does one gain a use of that place where he or she is, in no sentimental or enlarging way? How do you get to ground?" Words themselves are experienced as physical in relation to the poet's presence. In Words Creeley's work explores a literal physicality of subject matter. (Creeley DLB)

Post–modern, beyond the enlightenment penchant for abstraction and idealism; rejects hegemonic position of MAN but grounds in concrete, human experience/perception/body

Man is at war to find his identity, as the poet continues: "Who am I but by a fix, and another, / a particle, and the congery of particles carefully picked one by another"--the realization, as in "Projective Verse," that man is an "object" (rather than egoistic "subject") in a "larger field of objects." (Olson DLB)