Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In Robert Creeley’s poem "The City," we encounter a fragmented meditation on identity, structure, and the essence of place, conveyed through a tapestry of disjointed yet resonant images. Creeley crafts an urban scene that resists cohesion and categorization, emphasizing the chaotic multiplicity of city life and the ways in which objects, spaces, and individuals inhabit it.

The opening lines, "Not from that could you get it, nor can things comprise a form just to be made," immediately set a tone of abstraction and mystery. This line suggests that understanding or capturing the essence of "the city" cannot be achieved through mere assembly of its components. It resists reduction to a single form or definition, indicating that a city's meaning or identity lies beyond what it’s made of, transcending the sum of its parts.

Creeley’s insistence to “let each be this or / that” is a call for individuality within the collective. The idea that “they, together, are many” suggests that each element within the city has a unique existence, yet they combine to form a larger, multifaceted whole. The city becomes an amalgamation of disparate entities—“wooden or metal or even / water, or vegetable, flower, a crazy orange sun, a windy dirt.” These seemingly random items and images do not merge seamlessly but instead maintain their own identities within the cityscape, evoking a sense of diversity and even disorder that characterizes urban environments.

The chaotic juxtaposition of materials, natural elements, and colors like “crazy orange sun” and “windy dirt” evoke an urban space where nature and artificiality coalesce. Creeley emphasizes the presence of both organic and manufactured elements, symbolizing the convergence of the natural world and human-made structures within a city. This blend of “vegetable” and “metal,” of “flower” and “sun,” points to the city as a place of stark contrasts, where vitality and industrialization coexist, influencing and reshaping each other.

In the image of “Shaded boy fall buildings,” Creeley introduces a more personal, perhaps vulnerable note. The juxtaposition of a "boy" with “fall buildings” could imply the weight or imposing nature of the city upon its inhabitants, especially the young or the innocent. The imagery suggests that individuals, particularly those in their formative years, are shaped and shadowed by the towering structures and inherent gravitas of their surroundings. The ambiguous syntax and lack of clarity in the line reflect the often-overwhelming experience of navigating the urban environment, which can obscure or overshadow personal identity.

The poem’s concluding image—a “bed that grows leaves on all its branches which are boards”—presents a surreal, almost dreamlike vision. A bed, typically associated with rest and domesticity, here transforms into something alive, sprouting leaves as if it were a tree. This unexpected metamorphosis suggests the encroachment of nature within the man-made confines of the city or perhaps the blurring boundaries between organic life and urban existence. The bed’s “branches which are boards” imply a fusion of the natural and the artificial, where even the most personal spaces adapt to or absorb elements of the natural world.

This final image leaves readers with a sense of ambiguity and disquiet. The bed, a place of intimacy and vulnerability, growing leaves indicates a transformation or intrusion. It’s as if the city, with its vitality and rawness, refuses to be neatly compartmentalized or domesticated. This melding of plant life with household objects hints at a city that doesn’t simply contain its inhabitants but grows into them, reshaping their lives and personal spaces in unexpected ways.

"The City" reflects Creeley’s characteristic embrace of fragmentation and multiplicity, resisting any attempt to encapsulate the city’s complexity in a straightforward narrative. Instead, he presents an impressionistic vision, composed of sensory fragments and loosely connected thoughts that capture the city’s essence as both a collective and a collision of individuals, objects, and natural forces. Through this kaleidoscopic lens, Creeley invites readers to experience the city as a dynamic, fluid entity that defies singular definitions, embodying the perpetual tension between unity and individuality, artifice and nature, form and formlessness.

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