For Creeley, poetry is a revelation or a record of reality, which is alwaysone’s own reality a person experiences in his primary condition of life. It isin poems that one arrives at the condition, and reality is the specific contenthe experiences moment by moment while he is writing a poem in particularcircumstances. To write a poem, then, means to recognize and follow itsactivities when they occur in the process of writing. In this light, the poet isjust “given to write poems.” He refuses to exert external control over hispoems, a refusal that involves himself in the generalizing mechanism ofrepresentation. Rather, he is in poems, in their activities, thereby directlyexperiencing and recording his literal fact of being. Rhythm is an aspect ofreality as the pattern of the sound-movements of words, which arises fromthe physical and physiological conditions of the poet. Meaning, the otheraspect of poetry, is not semantic meaning but emotion, which can be equatedwith material things as long as it remains in its context. Rhythm isdetermined in part by breath, the physiological condition, which is in turnshaped by emotion.