Poet David Brown Thought He'd Find Robert Creeley at SF State, Discovered Poetry Center Instead

HOUSTON CHRONICLE -- Brown served in Europe for several years after the war ended, finally leaving the service in 1977. He enrolled at San Francisco State, thinking Robert Creeley was there, to pursue a master’s degree. Turns out the poet was in Buffalo.

San Francisco in the early 1980s nevertheless proved a nurturing environment built around The Poetry Center, started in 1954 from a donation by W.H. Auden.

Brown had plenty of material from which to draw. He says the phrase “war poet” with some degree of discomfort, perhaps because there exists a perception of war poetry as a categorical genre, like sci-fi or western novels. But poetry about war is old as words and war.