Lines 1—3

The very first line of "Fading Light" introduces several key aspects of the poem. The poem begins with an immediate, emphatic "Now," followed by an impersonal "one" who could be the poet himself or, indeed, anyone, a pronoun that is followed by "might catch" in which the possibility of seizing a moment is at once asserted and then immediately questioned. Terry R. Bacon has remarked that "Creeley's poetry is expressed in the perpetual NOW. It is a 'real time' rendering, in a very solipsistic sense, of the universe he perceives." The title of poem has helped to establish that the poem is about dusk, and it is this moment of dusk to which the poet directs attention, as though perception could freeze the moment into something palpable. Creeley repeats verbs, as he will do throughout the poem—"catch it see it." His refusal to punctuate conventionally...