Gregory Crosby

@monostich

Poet. Author of Said No One Ever (2021) and Walking Away From Explosions in Slow Motion (2018).

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writing

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Gregory Crosby@monostich· 21d

Congrats @colsonwhitehead.com on the end of the trilogy; looking forward to reading it (also enjoyed the “MacArthur Park” schtick).

A copy of Colson Whitehead’s new novel Cool Machine.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· 25d

I miss my wife (she gets back from her trip on Monday).

Kathleen Ossip

Marriage

So much for the fighting
and the sex,
I want to be alone
with you in the next room.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· 26d

The sky over NYC this morning. "This is the Hour of Lead--"

The sun, seen through the haze of wildfire smoke, a pale orange disc seen through tissue paper.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· 28d

Baudelaire (trans. Walter Martin)

THE ALCHEMIST OF SORROWS

Creation basks in this man's fire,
While that man nullifies the sun;
What symbolizes death to one
Inflames the other with desire.

Intimidating Trismegist!
Transformed by your hermetic curse,
I am a Midas in reverse--
A most ill-fated alchemst,

For I transmute gold into lead,
Convert the heavens in my head
Till even clouds solidfy,

Enshrouding all my cherished dead,
And on the coast of Zion I
Construct immense sarcophagi.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· 29d

For Once, Then, Something

BY ROBERT FROST

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jul 12

Since I'm quoting myself, I might as well re-up this poem.

Prayer for the Icy Hand of Death to Grasp Their Hearts

At the center there is only the edge,
the mind’s dagger that swerves & then staggers,
that breaks against the delusion & swagger,
that greets you as you step out on the ledge.
It’s both a long way down & longer up:
to climb the calendar, gasping for air,
or meet the earth, that passage to nowhere.
We tried to drink deep from the loving cup,

& never saw the bead of bad luck drop
upon our breast. So now we know the score.
Now we know where to direct our prayers,
our thoughts. We know better, now, than to stop.
Here at the edge, we are not as before.
Slip & stumble, trip & fall, down the stairs,

& hit the wall.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jul 11

Went up to the Art Students League for the Fairfield Porter show, which is on view through August 18; hi Jimmy, hi John. Recommended.

Fairfield Porter, "Jimmy and John" (1957-58). Jimmy Schuyler, in a black sweater, looks off in one direction; John Ashbery, in a white shirt and gray slacks, looks off in the opposite direction.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jul 10

I decided to spend July writing letters, at least one a day, some handwritten, some typed on the laptop and printed out, and some typed on this manual Olympia.

A manual typewriter with a sheet of paper in it.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jul 10

This week's Little Free Library find.

M. Ilin's 100,000 Whys: A Trip Around the Room, published in 1933.

Do you want to hear twelve riddles about the most ordinary things?

Which is warmer, three shirts or one shirt three times as thick?

Can you make walls of air?

Does fire cast a shadow?

Why doesn't water burn?

Can you blow up a house with water?

Why does the stove make so much noise when a fire is lighted in it?

Why do we blow on a match when we want to put it out?

Is there such a thing as transparent iron?

Why are there holes in bread?

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jul 9

Struck by this stanza in an Alice Notley poem.

One steps
on a rusty nail, disbelieves
in lockjaw one thinks forever without a thought

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jul 6

Just did my weekly check-in to FB to make sure no one had died, and saw this.

A Facebook post in which someone asks, "Does anyone have a favorite translation of Dante's Inferno?" to which the poet Mary Jo Band replies, "I like the one by Mary Jo Bang, but that's just me."

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jul 6

There's never an Ultimate Nullifier around when you really need one.

A panel from Fantastic Four #50, by Jack Kirby, in which Reed Richards threatens Galactus with the Ultimate Nullifier, a terrifyingly powerful cosmic weapon that resembles a staple gun.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jul 6

The little girl from Them! (1954) wandering the desert in catatonic shock.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jul 6

No one in a grad school workshop—in 2006, at the height of the Iraq war, mind you—understood what this poem was about.

The Young Martyr’s Lament

O God, You lit the fuse while I was cradled
beneath my mother’s heart.
Too late, Your face, in faces I will shatter—
& now I fly apart.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jul 5

James Schuyler #smallpoemsunday

A Yellow Sonnet (Incomplete)

thinking sunny thoughts of my sunny boy
on my desk a piece of yellow paper
reminds me that on Tuesday we will enjoy
each other in a tower whose top
sees all Manhattan as it seeks the skip of
a yellow square of sunlight on the floor.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jul 4

Struck by lightning? Wind? An intense thunderstorm rolled through Brooklyn and split this tree in two. Sad: it’s part of a lovely long shady block around the corner from our building.

A tree stands split down the middle, almost as if it had been peeled.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jul 3

A cartoon by B. Kliban in which a mermaid sits on a suitcase by the side of the road, her thumb out, holding a sign that reads COAST.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jul 1

A parody of Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World" that's put her on the vast empty lawn of the "Great American State Fair."

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jun 29

From a 1998 on-stage conversation between Mel Brooks and Joseph Heller.

MB: We’re both the same. You became Joseph Heller, and I became Mel Brooks. Before you became Joseph Heller, you were free to do barrel loops and insanities. You were stuck after “Catch-22” because you had a hit. Once you have a hit, you’re chained to capitalism. You’re inextricably linked to supply and demand. I did “The Producers,” I was free. I did “The Twelve Chairs,” I was still free. I did “Blazing Saddles,” I was captured.

JH: You were a prisoner.

MB: I was OK for a while. “Blazing Saddles,” great movie. “Young Frankenstein,” top of my game as a director-writer. After that, capitalism. Artists shouldn’t work because they can sell; they should work because they’re inspired.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jun 26

I saw Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces this morning at the Angelika Film Center, and while there wasn't anything I felt should have been left in Fire Walk With Me (except for more Bowie), it was indeed fascinating to see these deleted scenes on the big screen.

Philip Jeffries (David Bowie) screams as he rematerializes in a deleted scene from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jun 26

This morning’s Little Free Library find. “Ask the way even though you know it.” “Strike water with a sword.” “Keep cool even when a tiger carries you off.”

A copy of Maxims and Proverbs of Old Korea.

Gregory Crosby@monostich· Jun 25

Lately I've been reading Eric Hoffer, the forgotten "longshoreman philosopher." This is from a library copy of the out-of-print collection Between the Devil and the Dragon (1982).