[2] Between 1965 and 1975 he composed the music to over five dozen songs and choral works, chiefly to texts by poets such as Emily Dickinson, Willa Cather, James Agee, Walter de la Mare, Gertrude Stein and Walt Whitman.
In December 1981, he wrote a series of letters challenging gay writer and activist Larry Kramer in the New York Native.
Among his concerns were Kramer's role as an alarmist and his claims that the sexual habits of gay men in New York were connected to Kaposi's Sarcoma.
Its frank sexual language immediately stirred controversy; later that year the FCC rewrote its rules governing the broadcast of "questionable" works, citing Jerker as the test case.
The Robert Chesley Award for Lesbian and Gay Playwriting, given annually by Publishing Triangle, is named in his honor.