Robert & Bobbie Creeley: Placitas phone log, 1968

(109:38): MP3
Among the reel-to-reel tapes in PennSound's Robert Creeley archive, we found a phone log Bob had made of a day in the life, the life being lived at the time in Placitas, New Mexico, in the late 1960s (let's call it 1968, but exact date not known as yet), where Creeley was  living his wife Bobbie Louise Hawkins and their children. The log captures everyday life, that great Creeley theme, from a daughter asking permission for sleep-over to a brief conversation about an overdue phone bill to a long chat with Bob's life-long friend photographer Elsa Dorfman. In an age of email, this time capsule gives a sense of the phone conversation as both a space of intimate exchange and quotidian commerce. And the personalities of Bobbie and Bob shine through, just at the other end of the line. (I haven't segmented the log as it strikes me as one long work, but I have provided a guide to the segments.)

Thanks to Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Bill Katz, Elsa Dorfman, and Penelope Creeley for permission to make this available on PennSound.

00:00 Kate & Lorraine for Sarah; slumber party
02:15 Bobbie Louise Hawkins [Bobbi Creeley]: Cleaning a jacket
03:02 Bobbie to Peter Spackman, Cultural Affairs (NY) publisher
09:54 A phone bill on hold
11:10 Bobbie to John, includes reading Robert's letter to the editor of Albuquerque Tribune on being "beard" profiled
22:49 What's your address?
24:29 Girl Scout pledge
25:55 Bill Katz to Bobbie and Robert ... on publication of Numbers, with Robert Indiana (Stuttgart, Germany: Edition Domberger)
47:51 A trip to Minneapolis
50:04-end: Elsa (Ellie) Dorfman

Creeley on PennSound
Creeley at EPC