Robert White Creeley was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, and after the death of his father, he moved at the age of four with his mother and sister to nearby West Acton. His childhood was spent in this rural neighborhood, and at fourteen he entered Holderness School in Plymouth, New Hampshire, where he was a scholarship student and contributed to school publications. After three years at Holderness, Creeley entered Harvard in the fall of 1943, leaving after one year to drive an ambulance in the India-Burma theatre of World War II. He married Ann McKinnon in 1946, commuted to Harvard for a while before dropping out for good, and started a close and fruitful friendship with Cid Corman, who conducted a Boston radio program called "This is Poetry."

During this postwar period Creeley had been strongly swayed by the ideas in The Wedge (1944) by William Carlos Williams and Make It New...