Gregory Crosby is the author of Said No One Ever (2021, Brooklyn Arts Press) and Walking Away From Explosions in Slow Motion (2018, The Operating System). He's an incredible poet, gifted educator, and super fun to have a conversation with. I took his Brooklyn Poets class on the sonnet back in 2022 which was truly one of my fondest poetry memories and an extremely generative experience. Many of the poems in Animal Unfit, and my poem, “Interpreting Dreams”, was written during that time.
In this conversation, we touch on all sorts of topics such as Las Vegas, Twitter, and the murky history of the term "flash fiction". But mostly we discuss Gregory's journey to poetry, his work as an educator, and his approach (and enviable confidence!) to writing.
It's never a creative writing teacher's job to tell a student that they're a terrible writer because the world will tell them that soon enough. It's not my job to be a dream crusher. I don't want to be a dream crusher. I want to be the person who does the opposite. I want to run the film of the dream getting crushed. I want to put that into reverse and watch the crushed dream sort of blossom back up into its fullness.
Gregory Crosby
Mentioned in this episode:
Gregory's Twitter: @monostich
Gregory's Bluesky: @monostich.bsky.social
Gregory's Website: speakingpicture.com
Brooklyn Poets: https://brooklynpoets.org/
About the guest:
Gregory Crosby is the author of Said No One Ever (2021, Brooklyn Arts Press) and Walking Away From Explosions in Slow Motion (2018, The Operating System). He's an adjunct professor at Pace University, and is currently the poetry editor for the spooky online journal Bowery Gothic.
What I had to say about Gregory's poetry collection, Said No One Ever, in a past issue of River Mouth Review:
Said No One Ever is filled with smart language, rich emotion, and surprise. One of my favorite poems from the collection, Unfinished, shifts in feeling each time I read it, leading to a complex effect that mirrors the emotional complexity of family life and childhood. "Once, we found the Devil's high school yearbook / in a blackened old box marked For Goodwill: / dig those crazy sideburns!" The balance between levity and seriousness, sincerity and exhaustion, pop culture references and traditional poetic forms, makes for a compelling, inspiring read. This book has given me so much to think about."
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