Fanny Howe and Jim Dunn Discuss Harry Crosby
September 10, 2024
Jim Dunn and Fanny Howe in Conversation
In preparation for the celebration of the publication of “Harry Crosby’s Selected Poems” by Madhat Press, edited by Ben Mazer, this discussion took place June 19, 2020. on Fanny’s porch; safely distanced and masked while watching the neighbor children and random bunny rabbits dart across the backyard of her apartment building in the Pandemic Friday dusk. The conversation was first printed in spoKe magazine.
Jim: Ok, Fanny, here we are on your back porch discussing Harry Crosby. We are going to discuss a couple of pieces we wrote and one piece that John Wieners wrote. And talk about our trip the other day when we went up to Harry’s summer estate to Manchester hoping to find the spirit of Harry on the North Shore.
Fanny: Yes, and I think you and I both have shared this sort of interest in the ghosts of poets who didn’t get any real attention in Boston. So, it’s kind of, also, wanting to form something out of the deadness of Boston. Look at how Lowell had to run away and flee and had such bitterness about the city. He’s not the first. John Wieners doesn’t really complain about Boston, but it is where he is ill.
Jim: And you talk about the connection between John Wieners and Harry Crosby. Just as we met last week to explore Harry Crosby’s North Shore, you received a book from Robert Dewhurst, Supplication: The Selected Poems of John Wieners. I came about Harry Crosby through John’s poem Hart Crane, Harry Crosby, and I think John knew about Harry as far back as the 1950s. It seems that there is a certain vein of poet who knew about Harry, even though the legend of Harry was very sensational, I think many poets knew about his work. But it was almost like a secret. I think Harry himself said that he loved secrets. John Wieners and Gerrit Lansing also loved secrets. They were part of the Boston occult school of poets, as Gerrit called it. I think Harry was a poet they were interested in.
Fanny: Now that’s interesting and worth thinking about: Why did Boston have such a strong occult tradition? Even Emerson, and all of them were coming up to do occult practices in Boston.
Harry Crosby in his Military Uniform, the French Croix de Guerre Medal, 1919
Jim: Why do think?
Fanny: I do think there is a ghostliness to this city…
Jim: Do you think it is a reaction to the sternness of it? I mean Harry obviously loved saying, “Hey Boston, I hate you.” To the day he died he was obsessed with Boston. He was obsessed with getting Boston’s attention and the poem of Harry’s I read (Target for Disgust) certainly nails that.
Fanny: Exactly. Well, a lot of people who come from Boston hate it and people who come to Boston love it. There is something about the way it sticks to you if you grew up here.
Jim: Right. And you mention in your poem something very interesting about Harry. He hated Boston and that vitriol was the fuel that fired him besides many other things he was obsessed with, but he was a poet of pure belief. One of his beliefs was that his escape from Boston was a narrower escape than his escape from Verdun during World War I, where he almost died in the ambulance explosion.
That is how severe he thought of it. What was that and how did he respond to that? He was against Boston, but he always loved Manchester. In his diaries, he is always fond of Manchester and Tuck’s Point, which we visited the other day. You and I took a trip the other day and we had a great experience going to Harry’s summer home, Apple Trees Estate, in Manchester where the owner was kind enough to allow us to walk the grounds. We were specifically trying to find the spirit of Harry, and we almost found it. We talked a lot about the one picture of Harry driving his Bugatti sportscar in the driveway of the estate. He loved sportscars, he loved horses, and horse racing. He owned horses and he owned the dog which was at one time the fastest dog in all of France. But we felt the spirit of him riding his Bugatti into that big round driveway of the estate. We went there and to Tuck’s Point in search of his spirit. There are two works of art that I have explored that are related to Harry. One work of art is the sculpture of his dog, Narcisse, which is now owned by the MFA. Editions Narcisse was the namesake of the press before it became the Black Sun Press. The sculpture of Narcisse was created by Katherine Lane Weems whose estate where she lived and worked is just a few miles from Harry’s house. He also fell in love with an etching by Anders Zorn entitled Valkulla. He purchased the print and nicknamed the woman in the print “Jaqueline.” Of all the loves of his life including Caresse and Josephine whom he died with, he cherished Jacqueline, the woman in the painting, the most. He was influenced by the decadence and works of Oscar Wilde, and he would go out to dinner alone imagining Jacqueline as his date as a living person in his imagination. When he died, he left the etching five thousand dollars in his will. He left the actual print to Harvard University where it now resides at the Fogg Museum of Art. About fifteen years ago, my brother and I went on an expedition to find the print at Harvard. We stood in front of the print and we realized that it wasn’t that impressive. It depicts a woman with a walking stick resting barefoot on a log. She does have a certain radiance, but it’s nothing you would think he would fall in love with.
Harry and Caresse Crosby
Fanny: That’s fascinating.
Jim: Back to Boston. He had a real hatred of Boston while he loved Manchester until the day he died. He first met Caresse at a charity event in Beverly Farms. The entire North Shore was very important to him and a source of good memories. I think to tie it all together and why we both mention John Wieners, John was the first poet to invoke Harry’s name to me, and Gerrit was another friend to bring up Harry. I have this magazine from 1973 that has a John Wieners poem, a Gerrit Lansing poem and Harry Crosby poem in it, among others. It was published by Gerrit’s friend, painter and writer, Thorpe Feidt. I have a copy right here. It’s an amazing artifact. Not only were they aware of Harry, they appear in a magazine together. It just seems the right time for Harry’s work to be celebrated and made available to people so they can investigate the poetry on their own. What do you think?
Fanny: I don’t even know why John Wieners came into it, except for the mailman delivering that book, Supplication to me at the same time I was about to head up to the North Shore with you.
Jim. And that book came out four or five years ago, too.
Fanny: He’s done a beautiful re-issue.
Jim: Why do you think it came to you on that day? I have been in touch with Robbie too sending him various John Wieners stuff I find. I was going to read the John Wieners poem because I came to Harry Crosby through John and Gerrit and I would talk about Harry a lot when we met every weekend for coffee in Manchester. Gerrit and I would go to many book sales together and Gerrit found a copy of Crosby’s diaries and he said, “Here you need to own this book.” Gerrit was always gently aware, he would never give away the farm, but he would say read this and tell me what you think. That’s how Gerrit brought me along. We talked about Harry a lot when we would meet on weekends for coffee. And for awhile we wondered where Harry’s family’s house was in Manchester. And we finally realized it was right there going out of town towards Beverly. It looks like a palatial New England Version of the White House. It’s breath-taking, It’s amazing.
Apple Trees Estate, Manchester-By-The-Sea, MA, Summer Home of Harry Crosby
Fanny: We’ll you said the house was Georgian, and I think it is.
Jim: Georgian or Colonial, is it?
Fanny: Corinthian. Georgian with the plantation columns.
Jim: Oh yeah, it has that very Southern Plantation look to it, a real Southern Gothic feel. In the winter, that big field in front of it is a farm, so you see it clearly coming out of town and it’s beautiful.
Fanny: But I was just trying to say, that John Wieners, part of the coincidence is him arriving in this book at the door and me already thinking about Harry Crosby, as I remember him. They overlap in some intense way for me to do with Boston.
Jim: How did you fine those specific four lines of John’s that you quoted in your piece? It almost sounds like John is talking specifically about Harry Crosby.
Fanny: I know it’s in Supplication! So, I can’t explain it even, except what I was saying earlier about the sort of ghost presence that’s here. I suppose it’s in every city. But because I grew up here, it seems stronger.
Jim: But one thing I see similar between Harry and John was how hard it was for them in Boston. They both went away. John came back and lived with his family, not at all triumphantly. He was in and out of state institutions. That piece you wrote for Kevin Killian’s Mirage Tribute to John Wieners edition captures it. It’s only one paragraph long but it bowled me over on how hard Boston is on its artists. How hard it makes it for people. It makes them either die young or leave. Or give up their art altogether.
Fanny: It’s such a disapproving city, but it may not be anymore. I’m talking about another era really. But I can see what Harry was responding to: the clubs, and the clubbiness.
Jim: Yes, well he was a Brahmin, right?
Fanny: But he turned on it. He’s a traitor to his class…
Jim: He turned on it, I know. He threw a Molotov Cocktail on it. His relationship with Caresse really was an act of rebellion. Here’s a banker who discovers literature after a near death experience in World War I who sees his path to genius and expression of his art is through poetry. But it’s all rooted in his belief in madness. His poems are quite mad at times. He wants to sew himself together with his lover. I love it but the images are quite violent and severe at times, not at all eloquent. His belief in the sun and all the myths of the sun. Every sun mythology he tries to encapsulate in his work and as a poet he becomes a surrealist ahead of its time. Phillip Lamantia wrote about him. He said Harry was “a true dandy of explosive Promethean desire” stealing the fire. Some poets in the 1970s realized that Harry was a poet in the 1920s creating poetry that never got the attention it deserved. His obscurity had a lot to do with the way he went out with the murder of his mistress and his suicide. His parents were so ashamed and hurt that they never wanted to talk about it again. I’m sure Caresse did, but Caresse even tried to edit some details of the incident out of his diaries.
Morning Herald,Hagerstown, MD, Saturday, December 14, 1929, front page.
Fanny: Was she a Bostonian too?
Jim: No, she was originally from New York City I think the house she grew up in is where the Plaza Hotel now stands.
Fanny: The Rotch girl was from Boston…
Jim: Yes, the Rotch girl was from Back Bay and was married to Bigelow. Caresse was married to Dick Peabody at the time she met Harry. Peabody also fought in World War I and came back an alcoholic. He eventually wrote a book that became a tenet of Alcoholics Anonymous called “The Common Sense of Drinking” and I think he eventually died of alcohol, ironically. The other guy, Bigelow, Josephine’s husband, became a nuclear activist and he participated in the Freedom Rides for Civil Rights in the 60s. Caresse was fascinating besides inventing the bra and achieving so many other amazing things, she kept the press going after Harry’s death. Another interesting thing is her connection to Charles Olson. Black Sun published Olson’s Y & X, in 1950. She lived outside Rome in the 60s and she attended the Spoleto Poetry Festival in 1966. There is a photograph of John Wieners, Charles Olson, Ezra Pound, and Olga Rudge that is included in Wieners’ Behind the State Capitol. I never realized in that picture there is a woman seated with them facing the other way and that woman is Caresse Crosby. I read somewhere that Olson arrived at the Spoleto festival in VW Bug with Caresse. She was a tiny woman and Olson being 6’ 8”, the contrast was striking. It was almost like the literary circus was in town.
Fanny: Yes. But it was a very masculine world of course so she got a bit neglected even though she did all the work.
Jim: Yes, she did. She wrote poetry too. It is also interesting how Harry got her to change her name from Polly to Caresse because it made a cross out of the two names when they were combined – Caresse vertically and Harry horizontally. It made a very interesting…
Fanny: He stayed with her for years, you know…
Harry and Caresse Crosby in 1927
Jim: Yeah well, they had an open relationship, obviously. He was a womanizer, a heavy opium user. He was a race car driver and an airplane pilot. Harry was also a great photographer. Henri Cartier Bresson had a relationship with Caresse and taught Harry photography. He had all these talents. But I think the important thing isn’t the way he went out, but how he lived and the legacy of the great writers he published through Black Sun. He had an eye for publishing great writers…
Fanny: She did too…
Jim: Yeah, she did too. And maybe the two of them together is what did it.
Fanny: Yeah, exactly...
Jim: The fact is that those books exist, and the poetry lives on. Even though he lived that way, there are still the poems which we can now re-read and reconsider.
Fanny: Well, it is the life that is I find so fascinating. I’ve noticed more and more that about five poems by a poet exist through time. But what does stay longer is the life of the poet. People are still interested in what the poet did every day.
Jim: That’s true.
Fanny: You know, it’s mystifying. You know only two of their poems out of hundreds…
Jim: You know, Pound grew up in Philadelphia and I am from Philly. Why is there not an Ezra Pound High School where he grew up? Obviously, all the controversy surrounding his later years is a factor. But you know the house that he grew up in in Wyncote is still there. A few years back, I went and found the house. The woman that lives there now, her father was a scholar on Pound’s early life, and he bought the house and left it to her...
Fanny: Oh, oh…Well who cares about T.S. Eliot’s house?
Jim: Well, now they do...we should go up to Gloucester and visit his house.
Fanny: Yeah, they do. It’s just that I wouldn’t have the same passionate interest in T.S. Eliot’s house that I do in Harry Crosby’s and I don’t know why.
Jim: Crosby was influenced by Eliot too. But I feel the same way, that there is something intensely mystifying and mysterious about Harry Crosby. I think there are a lot of people passionately interested in Harry Crosby for many reasons. The musician Genesis P-Orridge from the band Psychic TV who was heavily influenced by William Burroughs, was so enamored with Harry and Caresse that he named his daughter Caresse. There are so many different strains of people who come to Harry Crosby from different angles. I think his poems are the best way. But the life is very fascinating.
Fanny: And it is the familiar beat of the aristocratic person who is a drunk and pushes everything to the limit yet is very fussy at the same time.
Jim: Yes, and who gives the world the finger but also cashes the check. I mean he was a banker and J.P. Morgan was his Uncle, so Uncle Jack gets Harry a bank job in Paris. He would commute to the bank in a canoe on the Seine in a red suit and Caresse would be wearing only a bathing suit. She had a beautiful figure and as she paddled home on the Seine, all the French men would be hooting and hollering at her. An amazing unique couple, and I think you’re right if wasn’t the two of them the magic they created together may not have happened.
Fanny: He wouldn’t have survived.
Jim: Even through the darkness, he believed that through death love can be made immortal, love is stronger than death. A lot of people won’t consciously test that theory. You’re right, there is a certain nobility in his belief. When he and Josephine got together, she was really challenging him to put his money where his mouth was. And he did. But if he had his druthers, he would have done it with Caresse, but we’ll never know. They had a date set that they would both die together and then have their ashes spread over New York City from an airplane. She agreed to it and must have been heartbroken he went through with it with a younger fiery version of herself. Harry’s powers of attraction must have been so mysteriously captivating. Even when you see pictures of him, his face is ever changing. You can’t really get a good handle on his looks. He is like a ghost that changes and it’s beautiful. There is a portrait of Harry that an artist painted that Caresse destroyed after Harry died because it was so haunting to her. His eyes in the painting are so wild and penetrating. It is not a great painting, but it captures, maybe too much, his volcanic spirit.
Fanny Howe was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1940 and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Howe is the daughter of the Dublin-born playwright and novelist Mary Manning and of Mark DeWolfe Howe, a Boston Brahmin and Harvard Law School professor.
Howe is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and prose. Her recent collections of poetry include Second Childhood (Graywolf Press, 2014); Come and See (Graywolf Press, 2011); The Lyrics (Graywolf Press, 2007); On the Ground(Graywolf Press, 2004); Gone: Poems(University of California Press, 2003); Selected Poems (University of California Press, 2000); Forged (Post-Apollo Press, 1999); Nod (Sun & Moon Press, 1998); One Crossed Out(Graywolf Press, 1997); O’Clock(Reality Street, 1995); and The Deep North (Sun & Moon Press, 1990).
Howe is also the author of several novels and prose collections, including, The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation (Graywolf Press, 2009); The Lives of a Spirit / Glasstown: Where Something Got Broken (Nightboat Books, 2005); and Nod (Sun & Moon Press, 1998). She has written short stories, books for young adults, and the collection of literary essays The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life (University of California Press, 2003).
Jim Dunn is the author of This Silence is a Junkyard (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022) Soft Launch (Bootstrap Press/Pressed Wafer, 2008), Convenient Hole (Pressed Wafer, 2004), and Insects In Sex (Fallen Angel Press, 1995). His work has appeared in Castle Grayskull, Blazing Stadium, Can We Have Our Ball Back?, Bright Pink Mosquito, The Process, eoagh, Gerry Mulligan, Cafe Review, Meanie, and the anthology tribute to John Wieners, The Blind See Only In This World.
