Robert
Crosson (USA)
1929-2001
Born
in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania in 1929, Robert Crosson remained in the East until
his family moved to Pomona, California in 1944. He attended the University of
California, Los Angeles, and received his B.A. in English in 1951, briefly
joining the Communist Party during his college years. After college he began
working as an actor in television and film, in 1954 landing a small role in White
Christmas. The following year he appeared as the character Danny Marlowe in
I Cover the Underworld. But Crosson grew increasingly dissatisfied with
the Hollywood scene, which, combined with his brief political activities,
dimmed his prospects for further Hollywood employment. In 1959 he traveled to
Europe, working his way through various countries as a piano player, a black-marketer,
and pimp.
In 1960 he returned to the United States, enrolling in Library Science at the graduate level at the University of California, Los Angeles. Eventually he dropped out, taking night jobs and attempting by day to write his first novel. Jobs as a painter and carpenter, another movie role (in Mike’s Murder in 1984), and a 1989 Poetry Fellowship from the California Arts Council, allowed him to survive during these lean years; however, as he grew older Crosson grew increasingly dependent on “the kindness of strangers” and friends, particularly Los Angeles poet Paul Vangelisti, who–when Crosson was evicted from the Laurel Canyon house where he was caretaker–took him in. Crosson lived with Vangelisti from 1993 until his death in 2001.
From the early 1980s to his death, he had
several books of poetry published. He 1981, his first book, Geographies,
was published by Vangelisti’s and John McBride’s Red Hill Press. They also
published his poetry (along with the works of two other poets) in Abandoned
Latitudes in 1983. Calliope was published the following year by the Los
Angeles publisher Illuminati. In 1994 the Italian publisher Michele Lombardelli
published Crosson’s The Blue Soprano; and Guy Bennett’s Seeing Eye Books
published In the Aethers of the Amazon: Poems 1984-1997 in 1998; But
most of Crosson’s writing remained unpublished at the time of his death–the
result of a heart attack brought on, doubtlessly, by years of heavy smoking and
drinking. Luigi Ballerini’s Agincourt press published The Day Sam Goldwyn
Stepped off the Train, a selected poetry, in 2004.
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During the last years of his life, Crosson
was beloved by Los Angeles innovative writers for his eccentric behavior–he was
gay and often described in some detail his sexual encounters and experiences to
both his gay and straight friends–his unusual sense of humor, and his poetry,
which came to be recognized as some of the most original writing of his peers.
BOOKS
OF POETRY
Geographies (San Francisco:
Red Hill Press, 1981); Wet Check in Abandoned Latitudes: New Writing
by 3 Los Angeles Poets–John Thomas, Robert Crosson and Paul Vangelisti (San
Francisco and Los Angeles: Invisible City, no. 3, 1983); Calliope (Los
Angeles: Illuminati Press, 1988); The Blue Soprano (Castelvetro
Piacentino, Italy: Michele Lombardelli editore, 1994); In the Aethers of the
Amazon: Poems 1984-1997 (Los Angeles: Seeing Eye Books, 1997); The Day
Sam Goldwyn Stepped off the Train (New York: Agincourt, 2004)
Letter
The
christian name makes impossible
any
face-front exchange of plain talk.
The
remedy (as I’ve sd before) runs
amok
the chittering squirrels on roof-
tops
& owls (tail-balanced) hung from
trees.
Adjectives kill, or stultify
and,
in any case, belabor the room
we
so carefully establish. Privacy
hs
everything to do with it–topical–
and
them day-old sausages brought (un-
wanted)
to the door we eat anyway,
threshold
and lintel.
You
tell me we have five years to
change
the language. I wonder what
you
mean. Me? Us? Why? And what’s
to
change? Maybe you didn’t say
‘change
the language’ but we hd 5
years.
My overalls will be washed
fifteen
times by then, some shredded
for
lawn chairs; the rest abused &
at
least one pair given my dentist
as
collateral...Poetic endowments
(?
To be sure) get me in fistfights
at
parking lots.
(from
Wet Check, 1983)
The
Hartford
–can’t
remember his name: a distinguished
writer;
friend of a Friend who’d once played
tennis
with his daughter–his house, a splendid
quarters
off Doheny... I was invited guest.
His
wife, my younger, went out for a swim.
We
share drinks.
“Trouble
at The Foundation,” he informed me,
was
“Too many ‘pansies’–; glanced at the
manuscript
it had taken four years to write–
read
the first page. “Well,” he said, “at
least
you’re literate.”
They
had a dog–
Just
down the street from Stravinsky
(who’d
already left.
(from
The Blue Soprano, 1994)
Coffee
Table
–meant
read the right magazines.
Made
prominent.
Didn’t
matter if you had one.
That
was protocol.
Somebodys-wife
who wrote for The New York Review–
Special
reservations held party,
before
bed.
____
He
sat atop me.
I
was thinking of the organist
in
Allentown.
(from
The Blue Soprano, 1994)
Brecht
Boomie
wrote me letters–
he
kept copies
He
had a sister and a brother-in-law.
His
step-sister was a film star whom
I
never met. She was mistress of Howard Hughes.
Nights,
she would sometime visit the family.
His
father (deceased) had once played the violin.
_____
Very
camp-gossipy letters
I
have lost them.
Boomie
was a director.
He
knew Elsa: we once spent weekend at the
Laughton
peacock-Farm in Palos Verdes.
Elsa
(inimitably) maintained that spices should
be
put with the pasta, not the sauce.
She
like watching car-races on TV.
(from
The Blue Soprano, 1994)
Lemon
The
lover I never dreamed of wouldn’t speak
When
I was at the ocean too.
Seaweed
and salt and wind
Blew
every list away.
Words
that would make me laugh now
Snorted
bulls and boardwalks
Me.
Me. Coins with the head of Caesar.
Flapping
seagulls.
And.
Under
a log, left worms and white.
White–until
I’m blue in the face
The
mirror lit.
Candles.
Or stars
Cut
to the bone.
Toenails
and chairs and elevators.
Faces
in back seats. Wet skin.
A
corked bottle. Salt
And
seaweed.
The
bare word he said
Needed
dead men.
A
green car.
Gone
to the moon.
All
thumbs and fingers.
(from
The Day Sam Goldwyn Stepped off the Train, 2004)
The
Red Onion
A
charley-horse was not an erection, but a cramp
in
the leg. Men whistled walking by the house. I
didn’t
much notice it needed painting.
It
was a red house, barn red. One side of it was boarded up, I never went in
there. I
imagined
it ghostly. I sometimes thought the men were whistling at me. But it was not
the
case.
The house was wooden, a very old house. I lived with my aunt, who rented the
upstairs.
Nights, I tried to imagine what it would look like, but I could not do much
with
it.
The yard was a mud shambles: nothing could grow there. I could not imagine it a
new
house,
nor did I want to. It was not in the right place.
The
reason it was called The Red Onion was not what I thought. I thought it was
called
that because it was red–though a red onion is not red, it is purple. I did not
like
the
men whistling when they walked by. I pretended I didn’t live there.
(from
The Day Sam Goldwyn Stepped off the Train, 2004)
The
Man in the Moon
In
this bright-red-paper wading boots,
His
well-worn thumbs–:
‘You
must be drunker than I thought!’
And
dove into the lake.
–Patchen
The
way the water shows the hills.
A
milky rim–an edge
To
this naked guy:
Head-first.
A
husky fellow, read–
No
sound of splashing; nor
Penetration
Moon.
A
still-like–
Rock-reflection
of
What’s
plummeted.
(from
The Day Sam Goldwyn Stepped off the Train, 2004)
Pythagoras
Evil
resounds like water.
Water
is a way to think.
Thoughts
drink well at noon.
Four
is tonic and more fertile.
Five
is sometimes marriage–
Sacred
to Aphrodite.
Stark
failures of the drowned.
Misery
like success is infantile–
Feminine,
wanting both yes and no.
Seven
is the mind–virgin, musical–
Associated
with the birth of heroes.
Eight
seeks eros, ultimate friendship.
Unburnished.
Water
reads like skin–
Numbers
sound like dance running.
What
comes next, a question in the mind.
Half
dozen of the other–
The
first perfect number.
Moons
incarnate.
Hand
in a pale of rum so far from June
it
makes one want to dance–
June,
an alibi
For
myopia & romance.
(from
The Day Sam Goldwyn Stepped off the Train, 2004)
The
Collar
I
feel like I’m wearing a watch:
The
hand to the cuff–the Ballpark–
Colorful
folk stealing each others’ cars
And
suits of clothes they live in (after
Retrieval)
or bets on the races:
A
world of bookies and fast laughs.
The
sacred, sacred.
How
to nail your hand to a board and drive
Timber
to Emergency: how to lose a finger
And
(again) pick up the guitar or piano.
How
to walk crossroads against the light
And
make it fine kettle of fish, having
Lost
the sportspage or pooltable left
the
backdoor open, or the wife
At
her embroidery.
A
round-trip to Aussie-land where babies
Are
borne to pouches and eat Kiwi–
Aborigines
prowling in the bush
This
side marbled architecture they
Haven’t
shoes to fit: the fix of a smile.
Celebrating.
A
child hugging his mother’s skirts.
Where
sea is that and stone is a place
Of
choirs.
(previously
unpublished)
PERMISSIONS
“The
Hartford,” “Coffee Table,” and “Brecht”
Reprinted
from The Blue Soprano (Castelvetro Piacentino: Michele Lombardelli editore,
1994). Copyright ©1994 by Robert Crosson. Reprinted by permission of Michele
Lombardelli editore..
“Lemon,”
“The Red Onion,” “The Man in the Moon,” and “Pythagoras”
Reprinted
from The Day Sam Goldwyn Stepped off the Train (New York: Agincourt, 2004).
Copyright ®2004 Estate of Robert Crosson. Reprinted by permission of Paul
Vangelisti.
“The
Collar” previously unpublished. Copyright ©2004 Estate of Robert Crosson.
Reprinted by permission of Paul Vangelisti