The Rain (Robert Creeley)

This poem is my favorite poem. I love the way it sounds. I love what it means to me.

I first read it in a poetry anthology I received in 9th grade that really ignited a love of poetry in me. Each poem was prefaced with a comment from a random person, not an academic, about why the subsequent poem was their favorite poem. For this poem's preface, the woman said that the first part was full of stress and jumbled meaning and that she only began to breath again once the lines "Love, if you love me..." started.

I think it was the first time I had ever heard that lines could be jumbled, unclear and yet still loved. That was very freeing, as a reader of poetry. It didn't much matter if I understood every single line or what every single word was doing there. It was the overall picture they created for me that mattered. It was the way they felt.

This poem feels, for me, as it did for the woman who chose it for that anthology, hectic at first, then calm and directed. I see it as this person sitting inside, perhaps seated by a window, hearing a rainstorm. At first, all N can think of is anxiety-filled: "What am I to myself". The way that Creeley writes these lines is hectic-making. They are hard to read. My breath stumbles over itself. But then it all brakes. The cure to this endless questioning, of finding oneself, is for N's love to come close.

At the end, N tells the love to "Be wet/with a decent happiness." That is, N tells the love to be like rain, the impetus for all the questions, but to also have a decent happiness--to have a calmness, a non-gleeful happiness. I think happiness like that is the same as to be contentedly secure. So, N is telling the love to be questioning, but to not get all worked up or anxious, to be calm with a satisfied happiness. The poem is about love as much as it is about rain and questions of self.

Favorite line: "Love, if you love me,/lie next to me."