Car (Symbol - I Know a Man")
In "I Know a Man," Creeley introduces the symbol of a car to represent materialism. In the poem, the speaker voices his concerns about the darkness he sees out in the world. He wonders if he should just buy a large car, as a means of forgetting about these troubles. His friend suggests that focus on driving (presumably, in the car he already has). The direct, concrete nature of the speaker's response shows the way in which the car is a stand-in for escaping existential questions through purchasing things. For Creeley, the car is is just a prime example of the sort of object people use to escape their anxieties.
Words (Motif - "The Language")
In "The Language," the speaker expresses frustration about his inability to define love. He makes multiple attempts and moves through various descriptions, but ultimately finds the effort to be lacking. Here, Creeley returns to the motif of words. The poem explores the idea that words are the writer's only tool for creation, but that they never quite achieve their goal. In this particular example, the feeling of love (with particular emphasis on the repeated phrase "I love you") is given various attributes but the speaker ends the poem by pointing to what is missing. The motif of words is revisited here to show their limitations.
The Sea (Symbol - "Myself")
In "Myself," the speaker describes a walk by the sea as he reflects on the understanding that develops with age. He offers a very painterly image of the sea, depicting the lightly cloudy evening sky above it. The sea, in this example, functions as a symbol for memory, one of the major subjects of Creeley's later work. Its beauty is marked with a certain level of bittersweetness, as the speaker is required to reconstruct this scene. As the rest of the poem delves into life's various difficulties and hard lessons, this moment stands out as a memory of a place that cannot be returned to.
The Desert (Symbol - "Heroes")
At the end of the poem "Heroes," Creeley, as the speaker in the text, says that the "mountains" and "desert" await heroes like Aeneas and Hercules. He suggests that the world is constantly waiting for and in need of heroic figures like them. This desert scenery symbolizes the timeless role of these narratives in the world. He purposefully avoids images tied to any particular time period or geographical area to suggest the primordial quality of these stories. These images are used to lend credence to the idea that hero myths are an essential part of every culture.
Yellow Leaf (Symbol - "The Window")
In the poem "The Window," the speaker uses the image of a yellow leaf to symbolize perspective. In the poem, the speaker goes through a series of images to show how his point of view impacts what he is able to perceive. Like a camera, he captures various people and objects as they move through space. The leaf is a particularly notable image in that he portrays it falling. In showing how it "drops into place," the speaker is highlighting how it centers the scene.
