and Wieners etc… loneliness and isolation being a
key theme. He had one glass eye and was known
never to shy away from physical confrontation, he
was a literal embodiment of “the wounded
healer”. His poetry involves a visionary
experience or ignites one in the audience, what
Pound called “Increment of association”. This
“visualisation” or “imaginal flight” he advocates
for poetry, means that he was a forerunner for
many beat poets visionaries such as Ginsberg and
McClure (e.g. Ginsberg’s “angelical ravings”)
(Harvey & Wallis, 2007). He subsequently
acknowledged that he learned from Snyder that a
visionary experience can symbolise the coming of
manhood in Native American tribes. Therefore the
exchange of knowledge with the beats was, at
times, symbiotic. However he is mainly known as
a harbinger for beat poetry in “I know a man”
where he opens the tone with a question “the
darkness surrounds us what can we do against”.
Creeley is waiting for a change or revolution and
this is further perpetuated in “heroes” when he
says “all that industrious wisdom lives in the way,
the mountains and the desert are waiting".
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