Seeing With Eyes Closed:
The Prose Poems of Harry Crosby
by Harry Crosby
edited and with an introduction by Gian Lombardo
with essays by Bob Heman and Robert Alexander

ISBN: 978-1-935835-25-7
Perfect Bound, $19.00
September 2019
5.5 x 8.5 inches, 260 pages
PROSE POETRY

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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.

From Seeing With Eyes Closed...

Q.E.D.

I am a tree whose roots are tangled in the sun
All men and women are trees whose roots are tangled in the sun
Therefore humanity is the forest of the sun.

Animal Magnetism

All the sailors are laughing. It is contagious. All the whores are yawning. It is contagious. And all night long we wear ourselves out trying to laugh and yawn at one and the same time.

I Break With The Past

In a hot office building a man is dictating a letter to a bright-eyed stenographer who has just graduated from the College of Progress. Dear Madam I regret to inform you that your swans have sleeping-sickness, but I am far away in the country wandering across the golf links your bright-colored scarf around my neck. I cannot seem to find you. I look into every bunker. I ask the caddy with the gluttonous face. I call out loud to the birds. I keep remembering how good-looking you are with your bedroom eyes and your new-moon ears. I begin to run. It is growing late for the red wolf of the sun has almost disappeared into his cavern of night. I run over the wooden bridge. I break with the past and race into the future over the far end of the links feeling myself fly through the air towards two sensations of light which turn out to be your eyes. When I wake up I am as tired as a marathon runner.

Unleash The Hounds

They play at their game of croquet but there is no queen to shout "get to your places" no hedgehogs for balls no live flamingos for mallets no soldiers to stand upon their hands and feet to make the arches — so is the game of life a very ordinary game unless we unleash the hounds of imagination.