Pool is a published poet and reviewer and a teacher of high school English. In this essay, Pool discusses elements of formal structure in Creeley's poem.

A young or inexperienced reader of poetry might well be perplexed upon first encountering Robert Creeley's poem "Fading Light." The poem lacks many of the features that are prominent in other poems. There is no rhyme and no meter, as in traditional verse, and yet the poem also lacks the colloquial familiarity of much contemporary free verse. Instead, the poem is difficult to grasp upon first reading, and even in subsequent perusals does not easily yield up its meaning and structures. Still, Creeley is regarded as a major poet, and as with many works by major writers, this poem reveals a structure that, while not obvious or simple, nevertheless connects the apparently chaotic lines and imagery into a coherent whole.

Some...