Gregory Corso (illustration)

Gregory Nunzio Corso (March 26, 1930 – January 17, 2001) was an American poet, the fourth member of the canon of Beat Generation writers (with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs). Download high resolution version (681x759, 46 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Download high resolution version (681x759, 46 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... March 26 is the 85th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (86th in leap years). ... 1930 (MCMXXX) is a common year starting on Wednesday. ... January 17 is the 17th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2001: A Space Odyssey. ... A poet is some one who writes poetry. ... The term Beat Generation refers primarily to a group of American writers of the 1950s. ... Jack Kerouac (pronounced ) (March 12, 1922, Lowell, Massachusetts – October 21, 1969, St. ... Allen Ginsberg (left) with his lifelong companion, poet Peter Orlovsky. ... William S. Burroughs. ...

Life

Corso's mother, sixteen years old when Gregory was born, abandoned the family a year later and returned to Italy. Corso spent most of his childhood in orphanages and foster homes. His father remarried when he was eleven years old, and he had his son stay with him, but Corso repeatedly ran away. He was sent to a boy's home, from which he also ran away. His troubled adolescence included a stint of several months in the Tombs, the New York City jail, for a case involving a stolen radio, and three months of observation in Bellevue. At seventeen, he was convicted of theft and sentenced to Clinton State Prison for three years. Incarcerated in Dannemora for burglary in 1947, Gregory Corso dove into literature in the prison's library and began writing poetry. He returned to New York City after his release in 1950 and met Allen Ginsberg in a bar in Greenwich Village (the Pony Stable), where in the course of their initial, though long, conversation Ginsberg (and Corso) found out that Corso had unwittingly been spying on Ginsberg and his then girlfriend having sex from the apartment window across the steet. Ginsberg then introduced Corso and his poetry to other members of the beat literary scene. Bellevue (French, meaning beautiful view) is the name of many places in many countries: Australia Bellevue, Western Australia See also: Bellevue Hill, New South Wales Canada: Bellevue, Alberta Bellevue, Newfoundland and Labrador Bellevue, Ontario Bellevue, Prince Edward Island Bellevue, Saskatchewan Germany: Schloss Bellevue is the official residence of the President... Dannemora is a town located in Clinton County, New York. ... Old book bindings at the Merton College library. ... Look up poetry in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Flag Seal Nickname: The Big Apple, The Capital of the World[1], Gotham [2], Metropolis Location Location in the state of New York Government Counties (Boroughs) Bronx (The Bronx) New York (Manhattan) Queens (Queens) Kings (Brooklyn) Richmond (Staten Island) Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Geographical characteristics Area     City 1,214. ... The Washington Square Arch Greenwich Village (pronounced Grennich Village; also called simply the Village) is a largely residential area on the west side of downtown (southern) Manhattan in New York City. ...

Corso died in Minnesota of prostate cancer on January 17, 2001. He is buried just as he wanted, next to the grave of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in the Cimitero Acattolico, the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. He wrote his own epitaph: Official language(s) None Capital Saint Paul Largest city Minneapolis Area  Ranked 12th  - Total 87,014 sq mi (225,365 km²)  - Width 250 miles (400 km)  - Length 400 miles (645 km)  - % water 8. ... Prostate cancer is a disease in which cancer develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system. ... January 17 is the 17th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2001: A Space Odyssey. ... Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley (August 4, 1792 – July 8, 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets and is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets who wrote in the English language. ... Shelleys Tomb in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, an 1873 painting by Walter Crane. ... Shelleys Tomb in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, an 1873 painting by Walter Crane. ...

Spirit

is Life

It flows thru

the death of me

endlessly

like a river

unafraid

of becoming

the sea

Poetry

Gregory Corso's first volume of poetry was privately published in 1955 (with the assistance of associates at Harvard, where he had been auditing classes): The Vestal Lady on Brattle and other poems. This was the year before the publication of Allen Ginsberg's first collection of poetry, and two years before Kerouac's On the Road. In 1958, Corso had an expanded collection of poems published as number 8 in the City Lights Pocket Poets Series: Gasoline/Vestal Lady on Brattle. His most notable poems are Bomb (formatted as typewriter-art in the shape of a mushroom cloud) and Marriage, a humorous meditation on the institution. A passage from that poem: Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ... On the Road book cover On the Road is a novel by Jack Kerouac, published by Viking Press in 1957. ... The City Lights Pocket Poets Series is a series of poetry collections published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Books of San Francisco since August 1955. ... The atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945 A mushroom cloud is a distinctive mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke, flame, or debris resulting from a very large explosion. ...

But I should get married I should be good

How nice it'd be to come home to her

and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen

aproned young and lovely wanting my baby

and so happy about me she burns the roast beef

and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair

saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!

God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!

So much to do! like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night

and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books

Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower

like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence

like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest

grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!

And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him

When are you going to stop people killing whales!

And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle

Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust--

Ted Morgan described Corso's place in the beat literary world (in Literary Outlaw, the Life and Times of William S. Burroughs): If Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs were the Three Musketeers of the movement, Corso was their D'Artagnan, a sort of junior partner, accepted and appreciated, but with less than complete parity. He had not been in at the start, which was the alliance of the Columbia intellectuals with the Times Square hipsters. He was a recent adherent, although his credentials were impressive enough to gain him unrestricted admittance ... Ted Morgan, French-American writer, biographer, journalist, and historian, born Le Comte Sanche Armand Gabriel de Gramont on March 30, 1932, in Geneva, the son of Gabriel Antoine Armand, Comte de Gramont (1908-1943), a hero of the French Resistance. ... The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, père. ...

Quotes

Other than Mr. Corso, Gregory was all you ever needed to know. He defined the name by his every word or act. Always succinct, he never tried. Once he called you "My Ira", or "My Janine" or "My Allen", he was forever "Your Gregory". — Ira Coehen

Bibliography

• The Vestal Lady and Other Poems (1955)
• This Hung-Up Age (1955) (play)
• Gasoline (1958)
• Bomb (1958)
• The Happy Birthday of Death (1960)
• The American Express (1961) (memoirs)
• Long Live Man (1962)
• There is Yet Time to Run Back through Life and Expiate All That's been Sadly Done (1965)
• Elegaic Feelings American (1970)
• Egyptian Cross (1971)
• Ankh (1971)
• The Night Last Night was at its Nightest (1972)
• Earth Egg (1974)
• Writings from OX (1979) (with interview by Michael Andre)
• Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit (1981)
• Mindfield: New and Selected Poems (1989)

Michael Andre (born August 31, 1946) is a Canadian poet, critic and editor living in New York City. ...

External links

• Gregory Corso biography from the Museum of American Poetics
• Gregory Corso (1930–2001) from Modern American Poetry
• Gregory Corso, 1930–2001
• A Tribute to Gregory Corso in the Woodstock Journal
• Selected Poems and Directory