Seeing With Eyes Closed: The Prose Poems of Harry Crosby

by Harry Crosby, Gian Lombardo (Editor)

Overview

For the first time ever, this volume collects together all of Harry Crosby's published prose poems, including the
complete texts for Crosby's Dreams 1928-1929, Sleeping Together, Aphrodite in Flight: Being Some Observations on the Aerodynamics of Love, and Torchbearer, plus selections from Chariot of the Sun and Mad Queen. Originally these Black Sun Press titles were limited edition books and have been out of print for years and available only to serious book collectors. Active in the late 1920s, Crosby was the first poet writing in English to produce a significant body of prose poetry. He synthesized a great deal of the cultural elements of post-World War I Europe: Symbolism, Dadaism and Surrealism. At the time, he was a bold experimenter in form and content. This book also includes essays by Robert Alexander and Bob Heman, plus an introduction by Gian Lombardo.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781935835257
Publisher:	Quale Press LLC
Publication date:	09/15/2019
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Harry Crosby was born June 4, 1898, in Boston, and died on December 10, 1929, in New York City. A nephew of J. P. Morgan, Crosby was raised in Boston. During World War I he volunteered as an ambulance driver, witnessed the ravages of war, came close to being killed and earned the French Croix de Guerre. He settled as an expatriate in Paris after the war, and led an extravagant and bizarre life. He scandalized proper upper-crust Brahmin Boston by courting and marrying an already-married woman who invented the bra and changed her name from Polly to Caresse. In 1927, he and Caresse founded Editions Narcisse to publish their own work. Editions Narcisse later became Black Sun Press, which published their poetry along with work by Archibald MacLeish, Hart Crane, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce and Kay Boyle, among others. These were fine limited editions of well-made books. Crosby was also a frequent contributor to the avant-garde literary magazine transitions, edited by Eugene Jolas. Crosby ended his life in a murder-suicide pack with his lover, Josephine Rotch Bigelow, in a friend's apartment in New York City. His other collections of poetry include Sonnets for Caresse and Transit of Venus.

Gian Lombardo is the author of six collections of prose poetry and is the founding director of Quale Press.