[Crosby regularly wrote to his mother, sharing with her his plans for publishing books, his own ideas about poetry – even speaking openly about extramarital relationships. They shared projects, including an exhaustive reading of books in the Bible (Crosby has over one hundred pages of notes on passages from Old Trestament books). And from time to time, Crosby offered some explanation as what he was attempting in his own writing. This passage is from a letter dated August 7, 1928.]

I send you in another envelope seventeen poems Poems for the Sun Goddess but I do not think you will like them unless it be the Poem called Poem. But for me they show a real development forward – I suppose they come under the head of surréalisme You remember what Imber [?] said in the Saturday Review about the surrealist poet "when his poem is written he is not concerned if it ‘means’ anything or not. Certainly the surréaliste poems ‘mean’ nothing in the vulgar sense of the word but they arer nevertheless existent, vivid, and beautiful and is that not all that matters?"

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From Harry Crosby, "To Mrs. Stephen Crosby" letter of 7 August 1928, courtesy of the Special Collections, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.