I KNOW A MAN / . . . A BRAND / . . . A MAN

I KNOW A MAN
Robert Creeley
image/scan from
All That Is Lovely In Men
(Asheville, NC: Jonathan Williams, 1955)

All That Is Lovely In Men
back cover (to the left) and front cover (to the right)
“drive, he sd, for / christ’s sake, look / out where yr going”

As I sd to my
friend because I am
always blogging, –– this post, I
sd,

is about Robert Creeley’s “I Know A Man” and two poems published just this year – “I Know A Brand” by Rachel Loden and “I Know A Man” by Douglas Rothschild, respectively – that make something new using the form and/or key components of Creeley’s iconic poem. We’re going to take a little trip, so to say, with Creeley’s poem and two recent, and very worthy, variants on it.

With regard to Creeley’s signature poem, I can’t add much that hasn’t already been said or written. Check around, and you’ll find much on the web about “I Know A Man.”

First, foremost, and maybe period, end-of-the-story is Creeley himself, reciting the poem. PennSound features nine (!) different recordings, ranging from 1956 to 1981, of Creeley reading “I Know A Man.” Listen to them, please, if only to be reminded of how Creeley hesitates (some describe it as a kind of stammer) at the end of each line, particularly in the first two tercets.

There’s also plenty of reader or scholar commentary. Check out, for example, the very brief, decade-old, but still potent Seamus Cooney web-page on “I Know A Man.” It concisely addresses the wonderful ambiguity regarding who – the poem’s initial speaker or the friend – utters the word “drive” in the poem’s last stanza:

drive, he sd, for
christ’s sake, look
out where yr going.

As Cooney points out (and many others have said the same), there are two ways to read or hear “drive.” Creeley explained, more than once, that “drive” is the poem’s initial and primary speaker, the person who suggests buying “a goddamn big car” in the final line of the preceding stanza (and who says everything in the poem that precedes that line).

Creeley further explained, as a corollary to his point about who in the poems says the word “drive,” that the “he sd” in the final tercet does not pertain to “drive” but only to the “for / christ’s sake look / out where yr going” comment which ends the poem. According to Creeley, in short, the word “drive” ends one part of the conversation, and is then followed by the “look / out” interjection.

However, many readers read and hear “drive” as something said by the friend, who then continues with his “for / christ’s sake “look / out” warning. Among those who heard the poem in this way was Jeremy Larner, who titled his 1964 novel (later made into a Jack Nicholson directed film) Drive, He Said after Creeley’s line, thereby giving the poem a presence within our popular culture. With respect to the alternative readings, Creeley’s intention and explanation must be credited, but of course the other possibility only enriches the poem.

The “Modern American Poetry” site, curated by Cary Nelson, also has a page devoted to “I Know A Man.” It features eight excerpts by poets and others about Creeley’s poem. I happen to especially like the first excerpt presented, eleven lines lifted from a 1962 review by Cid Corman. I like it because Corman writes sharply and emphasizes the music of the poem. He remarks that it feels as if Creeley “scored” the words, and “sings” in “I Know A Man.”

There’s also a twenty minute discussion of the poem available on-line, recorded just this year and featuring Randall Couch, Jessica Lowenthal, Bob Perelman, and Al Filreis. It’s a good talk, particularly the way different recited versions are compared, and the short consideration, near the end, of whether the “look / out” while driving warning in Creeley’s poem is at all related to the line “no one to drive the car” in poem XVIII (“The pure products of America / go crazy–”) of William Carlos Williams’ Spring And All.

What I’d like to specially emphasize about “I Know A Man” concerns its words and lines. In the recorded recitations, Creeley says the words in an almost hesitant (some say almost stammering) manner, and the pauses at the line ends, especially after the six lines that make up the opening two tercets, are very noticeable. Of course, the lines in “I Know A Man” almost all end mid-phrase, and the thoughts or statements of the poem’s initial speaker are scattered, and so the hesitant reading and pauses at the line-ends both fit and highlight those characteristics.

But I think there’s also something more going on. The word-readings by Creeley, and the line-end pauses are directly related, I think, to his poetics at that time, one that was directly related to jazz. This is a matter I don’t think is emphasized enough about the poem (though see again the comments of Cid Corman, discussed above). Indeed, the concept of Creeley’s lines as jazz phrases seems mostly hidden, something that might be attributed to the fact that Creeley’s straightforward explanation of his poetics – on the front flap of All That Is Lovely In Men – apparently has never been reprinted, even though the original chapbook in which it was included was only issued in an edition of 200 copies. These days, copies of that book, with that front flap explanation of poetics, are priced around one thousand dollars each. No wonder nobody seems to know about it!

Here’s the first paragraph of Creeley’s front-flap statement from All That Is Lovely In Men (click to enlarge, although I hope you can read it as is):

Yes, Creeley’s “I Know A Man” lines are music, actually jazz, or similar (“complementary”) to it! Be-bop jazz, a la mid-1950s Bird and Miles. Each Creeley line is a series of word (or more fundamentally, phonemic) notes. The pauses at the end of each line emphasize the words as clusters of sounds, of the kind you’d hear blown out from Bird’s tenor or Miles’ trumpet.

An interesting – er, um – side note here concerns the specific tune – Miles Davis’ “But Not For Me” – that Creeley mentions. It’s an instrumental version of a Gershwin tune, recorded by Davis and a stellar group in 1954 and then released on the LP Bags’ Groove (1957) . Since that LP wasn’t released until well after the chapbook in which the tune is referenced, I can only presume that Creeley had heard Davis perform it live.

Unfortunately, there’s no version of Miles Davis’ “But Not For Me” on-line, and the thirty second samples that are available don’t fully capture the play ‘n pause lines of the chorus that Creeley references. Suffice it to say, Miles’ mode of playing mirror the manner in which the lines of “I Know A Man” are written, or at least heard as recited by Creeley, sound-bursts with pauses. Id previously offered here to send a mp3 copy of Mile’s tune to anyone who asked, for educational and noncommercial purposes only, of course. However, it turns out that my iTunes sound file doesn’t play elsewhere, unless you have certain freeware. Sorry about that, and alas, it looks like you’ll have to buy the tune or album if you want to check it out.

Meanwhile, let’s fast-forward fifty plus years, and take a look at two poems published this year that “I Know A Man” and make something new. First up, since it was published first, is Rachel Loden’s “I Know A Brand” (click on the poem, if need be, to enlarge in a new window).

I KNOW A BRAND
Rachel Loden
image/scan from
Dick of the Dead
(Boise: Ahsahta Press, 2009)

Loden’s “I Know A Brand” uses the same basic structure and most of the words of Creeley’s poem. Specifically, it has four tercets and all but about a dozen words of the original. Relatively speaking, the vocabulary modifications are minimal: Loden changes only approximately one-fifth of the original’s fifty-seven (including the title) total words. But while Loden preserves Creeley’s structure and most of his words, her changes most certainly result in a profoundly different poem.

The direction of Loden’s changes is obvious from the get-go, by which I mean the title, which substitutes “Brand” for “Man.” This signals that the poem will be – compared to Creeley’s – more specifically concerned with consumerism. This supposition is confirmed by the other substitutions, including “market” for “darkness” in the second tercet and the specific “Jaguar XKR” for Creeley’s more general “goddamn big car” in the third tercet.

I find the substitution of “market” for “darkness” a compelling and persuasive change. In part that’s because the existential angst evoked by Creeley’s “darkness” lives within Loden’s “market.” I think that occurs first because of the readerly memory of Creeley’s word when we come to Loden’s. But more than that, “the market” similar to “the darkness” is easily seen or felt as all-encompassing and dominating, a constant presence. Both thus “sur– / round us” and cause us to question “what / we can do against it.” In Loden’s poem, the more metaphysical concern of Creeley’s speaker (i.e., “the darkness”) is replaced with something (“the market”) is similarly nebulous and perhaps even more frightening: economic forces, seemingly uncontrollable except by a prosperous few, that power the buy and sell and profit and loss reality in which we in fact largely live, like it or not.

The changes that Loden makes that really take the poem in a different direction occur in the final tercet. After the poem’s speaker suggets buying a Jaguar XKR, the poem concludes:

floor it, he sd, for
christ’s sake, 4.9
seconds to 60 mph.

In Creeley’s “I Know A Man,” the final phrase “for / christ’s sake, look / out where yr going” can be read as an interjected alternative to the primary speaker’s suggestion that we should, against the darkness, buy a car and then drive, or more generally, consume and go. The friend’s interjected command is for specific attention and full awareness in every moment. It’s a demand that might, in the poem, be life-saving, in that the comment, particularly given the “for / christ’s sake” phrase, implies there’s some immediate danger that must be noticed. But it’s also wise in a more general way. Living fully in each moment, for those who can do so, can be a profoundly satisfying way to be.

In contrast, that said by the friend at the conclusion of Loden’s poem is decidedly less life-affirming or wise, to say the least. In “I Know A Brand” the friend’s interjected comment – “4.9 / seconds to 60 mph” – is but an advertising slogan or sales pitch point that simply reinforces and supports the initial’s speaker suggestion that we buy a Jaguar. If this comment offers any alternative to buying a Jaguar, it’s entirely distasteful: that we speed through our lives, the faster the better.

What a difference from the Creeley! Loden’s poem suggests a world in which people, dominated by market forces, can only think to capitulate (buy a Jag) or race through life without stopping to look (“4.9 / seconds to 60 mph”). This latter approach, of cource, is the exact opposite of paying attention to each moment, the gravaman of the friend’s poem-closing advice in Creeley’s “I Know A Man.” Loden’s take is sobering and pessimistic compared to Creeley’s, but I must say, it feels right: we the people, at least in today’s USA, can easily be seen not as a mindful bunch, but mindless, or essentially so, as we rush through our speed-dialed instant-messaged multi-tasked lives.

Loden’s poem is thus an homage to “I Know A Man” and an updating and tweaking of it, presenting as she does her decidedly more pessimistic take on our existence. Loden’s changes, while made to make a serious point, also strike me as funny, wickedly so. Humor shouldn’t or can’t be fully explained, so I won’t try to do so here. But I will say that I get a kick from how much the poem’s substance or meaning shifts even though there are, relatively speaking, so few changes.

I also get a kick from the fact the Loden’s changes seem to arise almost naturally from Creeley’s poem. After all, “I Know A Man” itself includes – in its “buy a goddamn big car” line – a comment on consumerism. Loden takes this kernel and in her poem grows it out into something completely different.

Finally, I enjoy Loden’s skewering of the Jaguar XKR, accomplished simply by using it as a symbol of ultimate consumerism. The TV commercials for that brand, and in particular the voice-over’s faux-prestigious tri-syllabic “Jag-yoo-ahr,” bug the crap out of me. Henceforth, every time I see on of those things on the road I think I’ll smile, wave, and shout out, “floor it!”.

“floor it, he sd, for / christ’s sake 4.9 / seconds to 60 mph”

I KNOW A MAN
Douglas Rothschild
image/scan from
Theogony
(no place: subpress, 2009)

Rothschild’s “I Know A Man” blows out the structure and much of the vocabulary of Creeley’s identically titled poem. Specifically, Rothschild does away with the four tercet form, and uses only approximately one-half the words from Creeley’s poem.

The large scale changes permit Rothschild to greatly open up his “I Know A Man” compared to the original. The initial speaker or voice in Rothschild’s poem doesn’t say something to a single friend, but to a whole crowd of folks – “the / firemen / the cameramen / the rescue worker / the volunteer / on the scene.” And isn’t “darkness” that “surrounds us.” Instead, we must confront and deal with a particularized, somewhat expansive, although no less troubling set of matters:

the terror
the turmoil
the bomb blast
the bombast
the racism
the rubble

The poem has become, plainly, one that follows from 9 /11. An interesting thing about the list of all that “surrounds us” is that includes both the chaos and destruction of the event (“the bomb blast / . . . / the rubble”) and elements of the national response to it (“the bombast / the racism”).

Then there are the changes made by Rothschild to the poem’s conclusion, embodied here in its final four lines. The suggestion by the poem’s initial speaker, about what to do “what [we can] do against it” comes as a shock, or at least it did for me: he thinks we should just blow it all up; as he puts it, in Rothschild’s memorable words, “why not get a god damn / big bomb & drop it.” It’s a stunning declaration of anger, hate, resignation, and destruction.

As in the original “I Know A Man,” the other speaker in Rothschild poem – it’s a single male who speaks (“he sd”), having morphed or stepped apart from the crowd who the initial speaker was talking to – immediately cuts in to suggest, at least de facto, an alternative. Hearing the idea to drop a big one, “he” scolds, or cautions, “for xrist sake watch out who yr / blaming.”

I love this. The urge to destroy through violence is undercut by a reminder that such action points fingers of responsibility, and that such finger-pointing seems cannot be done with certainty. The poem’s concluding speaker suggests that staking out the moral high ground, or casting any blame, isn’t so easy.

Rothschild’s “I Know A Man” is obviously a post-9/11 poem, written with a New Yorker’s strongly felt emotions. Of course, that day was a national event, and the kind of human-made mass killings, and our response to it, are not limited to that one day. We readers experience such matters almost regularly via the 24/7 information stream. Thus, “the terror . . . ” and all else that Rothschild’s poem states “surrounds us” seems to me as universal as Creeley’s original “darkness” or Loden’s “market.”

In terms of poetic method, maybe the most interesting thing about Rothschild’s poem is how similar it seems to Creeley’s poem even though, as explained above, so much is changed. Using the same title helps, of course, but more important are the key characteristics from Creeley’s poem that Rothschild does use. There’s the “as I sd to” opening, for starters.

Even when phrases are slightly modified (for example, Rothschild rearranges and condenses Creeley’s “ . . . or else, shall we & / why not” so that it reads “. . . & or else why not”) they still sound like Creeley. The reason of course, is both that the words remain the same and even when re-arranged still convey the thoughts of the poem’s speaker in a stammering, hesitant manner.

Both poems also make use of abbreviated words such as “sd” and “yr”. Rothschild, no doubt recognizing that these short-forms are almost indelible markers of Creeley’s poem, not only uses them almost as much as the original, but adds more. His poem has a second ampersand, and uses “xrist” for “christ.” These changes amplify the sense of similarity. Seeing “xrist” in Rothschild’s poem, I had to look again at Creeley’s, even though I’ve read it hundreds of times, to see if it was in the original. Finally, for all its differences, Rothschild’s “I Know A Man” tracks closely the original’s basic premise: a speaker to an other (others), and the other interjecting a response at the poem’s conclusion.

“the bomb blast / . . . / the rubble” --------- “the turmoil / . . . / the bombast”

Neither Loden’s nor Rothschild’s take on Creeley’s poem can rightly be called a parody. Parodies exaggerate for effect, imitate to poke fun at the original, often revealing the idiotic within the overly-pompous. Loden and Rothschild do something different with their original. In making their poems, the two poets impliedly comment on Creeley’s poem, perhaps even critique it in certain ways, but there’s no dismissal of it. What I said in this regard about Loden’s “I Know A Brand” must also be said about Rothschild’s “I Know A Man.” Both poems are an homage – and why not, Creeley’s poem is an enduring achievement in words – but also use the original to make something new, something of interest to readers today.

Are there other poems that have written after or in the vein of Creeley’s “I Know A Man”? If you know any, please leave a comment – I’d like to know.

Furthermore, will there be others who, similar to Loden and Rothschild, will write poems using Creeley’s “I Know A Man” as a starting point? As Loden and Rothschild show, the I sd / he sd set-up of Creeley’s poem, its ability to spotlight fundamental matters of utmost concern and how we should respond to them, can be adapted to circumstances or questions other than those posed in the original. And those adaptions, as Loden’s and Rothschild’s poems also show, can stand on their own as thought-provoking, interesting poems. So my guess is that there will be other variants on “I Know A Man.” At least I hope there are. Who’s next?

Robert Creeley
All That Is Lovely In Men
(Asheville, NC: Jonathan Williams, 1955)
(source for “I Know A Man”)

Rachel Loden
Dick of the Dead
(Boise: Ahsahta Press, 2009)
(source of “I Know A Brand”)

Douglas Rothschild
Theogony
(no place: subpress, 1999)
(source of “I Know A Man”)