Bobbie Creeley is one of those people you never forget. I've known her as long as I've known Bob, since I was twenty-two. She's unlike anyone you'd ever meet growing up in Jewish Boston; she comes from west Texas and by the time she was eighteen, she knew she wanted to get out of there. And she did.

For a long time, I only knew that she was wise, direct, and very practical. She has this way of being able to zero in on a situation. When she's in the room, she's the person who's in charge. It may look like she's not paying attention, but just try something. She knows when it's time to leave, before the roof falls in, before you make a fool of yourself. She's the person who reads the map; who says, 'Let's go to another garage and see what they'll charge' [whereas Bob and I would stay where we were and pay]. There have been times in my life when I've heard her voice in my head, much more straight-to-the-point than my own, 'Don't you see -- he's trying to do a number on you?'

Once, a long time ago, during the Paterson Society days, 1960, 1961, Bobbie, Bob, and I and some friends were sitting around with a new Polaroid camera. We undid the box. Bob and I were already discouraged, not interested; we'd rather talk than fiddle with this thing that won't work anyhow. But Bobbie jumped right in; took the whole kit on her lap, read the directions; figured out how it worked. Took pictures. When I was twenty-two, I wanted to be just like her.

Bobbie has her own language; it's west Texas/California hipster -- circuitous sentences and winding ideas, use of particular words, and cadence. I can't reproduce it from memory, but you can hear it in her prose. About four years ago, she began to write short stories about her west Texas relatives and to publish them. Then she decided to use her own name, Bobbie Louise Hawkins. When she was here in April 1973, it was the first time she'd come to Cambridge by herself, without kids, without Bob.

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