Robert Creeley was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, on May 21, 1926, the son of a physician. In 1928, his left eye was injured in an accident, which resulted in blindness and eventual removal of the eye. His father died in 1932, leaving his mother overwhelmed with the responsibilities involved in liquidating his father's medical practice.

Creeley attended Harvard from 1943 to 1946, interrupted by a stint as an ambulance driver in India during World War II. He was not a diligent student and dropped out of Harvard during his senior year without receiving a degree. In 1950, he began a literary correspondence with Charles Olson, which proved beneficial to him. Creeley taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina from 1954 to 1955, where he associated with a number of experimental poets and artists. Visiting San Francisco in 1956, he came to know a number of the Beat poets including Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Allen...