Self-Portrait
By Robert Creeley
A Bit About Robert Creeley
Poem and Interpretation
Self-Portrait
By Robert Creeley
He wants to be
a brutal old man,
an aggressive old man,
as dull, as brutal
as the emptiness around him,
He doesn't want compromise,
nor to be ever nice
to anyone. Just mean,
and final in his brutal,
his total, rejection of it all.
He tried the sweet,
the gentle, the “oh,
let’s hold hands together”
and it was awful,
dull, brutally inconsequential.
Now he’ll stand on
his own dwindling legs.
His arms, his skin,
shrink daily. And
he loves, but hates equally.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171569
This poem is symbolizing the way people often cannot change from who they actually are. They can't pretend to be someone they are not, similar to when the old man tried to be nice, but couldn't. This poem's theme is a reminder that people are generally unchanging.