Judson Crews and Lyn Lifshin (1 Viewer)

cirerita

Founding member
Never, I repeat, never try to find all the publications by these two writers... Unless you want to end up in a nuthouse :D

Today I was going thru' a magazine and I found a few poems by Bukowski. I didn't find any stuff by Crews and/or Lifshin. I was stunned. I couldn't believe it. It was simply impossible. I read the TOC again. Slowly, very slowly. No Crews. No Lifshin. I turned the mag upside down, I shook the pages, I carefully inspected the tears and the staples. No Crews. No Lifshin.

I smiled.
 
crews self published a bunch of books too. Those are not tough to find, but finding them all would be very tough for a collector.

Also, for anyone that has ever received a submission from Lifshin can tell you, she sends 40-60 poem submissions, sometimes two packs of 40-60 poems. A guy that I know still claims that he received a submission from her that used a ream of paper!

She submits to every magazine and has to be the holder of the record for most poems published by any poet while they are still living.

BIll
 
Well, Crews is still alive and his periodical apperances far exceed Lifshin's, at least in the mags I've seen so far. And Crews started out in the very early 40's, maybe earlier. If you open up any mag from the 40's/50's, chances are you'll see his name. Ubiquitous Crews.

He also put out quite a few mags (Taos, The Flying Fish and others I can't recall now) but B was in The Naked Ear only.
 
How many pseudonyms did Judsen Crews go
by, c. Any idea?

These are the ones noted in THE HEART'S PRECISION: JUDSON CREWS AND HIS POETRY: Cerise Farallon, Greasybear, Trumbull Drachler, Willard Emory Betis.

I've read elsewhere that there were additional pseudonyms used including one that was a female who had a writing career before and after her marriage...

There's additional conjecture that Mason Jordan Mason is also a pseudonym of Crews'.
 
Hey, in addition to the "then I gave up and started drinking heavily" pamphlet, I published Crews in Pig in a Pamphlet #10 back around 1984, a little booklet called Activity Ticket. Here is a site that offered the Bukowski one, the Crews one and two others -- alas, they have already been purchased.

http://www.pbagalleries.com/search/item_img.php?acq_no=181187

My friend Paul Fischer (published in Pig in a Pamphlet #11, between Crews and Bukowski, is sending me copies of his pamphlet, Crews' and a rare copy of Pig in a Poke #3 (so rare I don't even have it). I know I keep promising to trot out the scanner, but I should be able to maybe scan some of this stuff for you guys soon, if you would be interested.

About Lifshin -- I did publish her several times, including "Lips in this House" and "Sunday Saratoga" in Pig in a Poke #1. She was the small-press equivalent of a human wave attack -- envelopes packed to bursting with as many poems as she could cram in, and submitting every few weeks, it seemed. And by God, by sheer force of volume, once in a while I would find one I liked. (Which is more, BTW, than I can say for Steve Richmond. His stuff just never clicked with me.)

Anyway, that's my contribution for today. Comments welcome as always.
 
Is Judson Crews still alive? I haven't seen any recent information on him at all. I found one web page from about 8 or 10 years ago saying that his health was failing.
 
I'm not completely sure, but I think he's still alive. I sent him a letter a while ago and it was returned to me saying that the address was wrong.
 
Thanks Jason

More to that: "Crews admittedly wrote under numerous pseudonyms. Of these pseudonyms, Willard Emory Betis, Trumbull Drachler, Cerise Farallon (Mrs. Trumbull Drachler, maiden name Lena Johnston), and Tobi Macadams have been clearly identified. In the instance of these, and possibly many other pseudonymous names, Crews created a fantasy world of writers to encompass, perhaps, the breadth of his literary ambitions."

http://research.hrc.utexas.edu:8080/hrcxtf/view?docId=ead/00029.xml
 
Can anyone confirm that Judson Crews is still living? Hosh? He lived in Albuquerque, NM in 1998, which is when Thunder Sandwich said that he was in failing health.

He is not listed in the phone book there, and I remember that a few years ago he was listed.

If he is in an assisted living facility, he may not have a phone number listed. He is 91, so it is not beyond possibility that he is still living and doing well.

Best,Bill
 
More to that: "Crews admittedly wrote under numerous pseudonyms. Of these pseudonyms, Willard Emory Betis, Trumbull Drachler, Cerise Farallon (Mrs. Trumbull Drachler, maiden name Lena Johnston), and Tobi Macadams have been clearly identified. In the instance of these, and possibly many other pseudonymous names, Crews created a fantasy world of writers to encompass, perhaps, the breadth of his literary ambitions."

http://research.hrc.utexas.edu:8080/hrcxtf/view?docId=ead/00029.xml

Fernando Pessoa did the same thing. He had an alter ego for each of his different styles.
 
But from a collector's standpoint, doesn't that make it more interesting? Certainly more so than just checking items off a list...
Ah, I wish getting a handle on Bukowski's work were as easy as checking things off a list.

Martin's game of title roulette, Bukowski and Martin's penchant for reworking the same poem, and the existing bibliographies being incomplete all make for a lot of mystery and frustration when trying to map out the work.
 
haha! i was once published with lyn lifshin in a little 3x3 pamphlet called Cotyledon. funny to learn about how she sends off her batches of poems! and gee, here i thought i was all special and unique to be published alongside her....
 
But from a collector's standpoint, doesn't that make it more interesting? Certainly more so than just checking items off a list...

From a collector's point of view, yes. From a bibliographer point of view, it's a one-way ticket to hell.
 
I always assumed Lifshin had a lot of time on her hands. Nobody with a job and a life could submit that much stuff to that many places for that many years. I like some of what I've read. Also, either she's an ageless vampire type or some of the author photos I've seen are decades old because she doesn't seemed to have changed much in 40 years.
 
I just found an old mag from the 50's, and there were 5 poems only: 1 by Judson Crews, 3 by Cerise Farallon and 1 by A. T. Romo. Maybe that A.T. Romo is Crews as well.
 
I always assumed Lifshin had a lot of time on her hands. Nobody with a job and a life could submit that much stuff to that many places for that many years. I like some of what I've read. Also, either she's an ageless vampire type or some of the author photos I've seen are decades old because she doesn't seemed to have changed much in 40 years.

I was thinking the same things about her. She's good, but damn is there a lot of her stuff out there. Definitely a vampire.
 
This morning I received a copy of a letter from A.K. Austin (editor of Wanderlust) to Judson Crews, accepting some of his poems under the name of Wendell B. Anderson. There you have another pseudonym.
 
I think that Jay Waite, editor of Gale, is Judson Crews as well.

In a letter from Leslie Woolf Hedley (editor of Inferno, and infamously rejected by Bukowski when he was co-editing Harlequin) to Judon Crews, the first line reads:

"Dear Judson Crews (for Mason Jordan Mason)"

Pretty sure we have another pseudonym there.
 

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