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Beat Poet
March 26, 1930-January 17, 2001
 I suppose what I was looking for was what I read about in ON THE ROAD -- looking for the great city, looking for the speed, the sound of it, looking for what Allen Ginsberg had called 'the hydrogen jukebox world.' ... Lawrence Ferlinghetti, one of the other Beat poets, had called it 'The kiss proof world of plastic toilet seats, Tampax, and taxis.' That was okay, too, but the Gregory Corso poem 'Bomb' was more to the point and touched the spirit of the times better -- a wasted world and totally mechanized -- a lot of hustle and bustle -- a lot of shelves to clean, boxes to stack.
-- from CHRONICLES
In Bob Dylan's first years in Greenwich Village, Beat poet Gregory Corso was one of the "heavy people" he'd see going by while he was sitting on a stool, looking out the window of The Kettle of Fish. Corso was one of the younger members of the inner circle of Beat writers; he published his first book of poetry in 1955, before Ginsberg published HOWL. While he is not now as famous as Ginsberg, Kerouac, or Burroughs, Corso wrote poems full of startling imagery, biting humor, and a graceful thoughtfulness. "Bomb," published in 1958, is one of his best-known poems, and was printed in the shape of a mushroom cloud. Rather than being a straightforward political statement, it is a surreal love poem, full of dreamlike juxtapositions and goofy irony ("Know that the earth will madonna the Bomb/that in the hearts of men to come more bombs will be born/and they'll sit plunk on the earth's grumpy empires/fierce with moustaches of gold").
Gregory Corso was born in 1930 in Greenwich Village, and soon afterward his teenaged parents split up, leaving him to spend his early childhood in orphanages and in foster care. Though his father returned to take care of him when he was 11, he got into trouble throughout his teens, and at age 17, Corso went to prison for three years for theft. While incarcerated, he read a great deal of classic literature, particularly the romantic poet Shelley, and he began writing his own poetry. In 1950, the year he was released, he met Allen Ginsberg, who introduced him to the still-being-formulated Beat approach to writing. In the early to mid-1950s, Corso worked as a laborer, a merchant seaman, and a newspaperman, and moved to Boston and later to San Francisco. While there, with Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, he became known as one of the major Beat writers. Corso traveled widely, published sporadically, and taught for a period of time at the State University of Buffalo (where he was fired in 1965 for not signing a loyalty oath); later he taught during summer sessions at the Naropa Institute. Corso, who was married three times and had five children, became ill with cancer and spent his last months living in Minneapolis with one of his daughters. He died in 2001.
SELECTED WRITINGS
THE VESTAL LADY ON BRATTLE & OTHER POEMS, 1955
GASOLINE, 1958
THE HAPPY BIRTHDAY OF DEATH, 1960
THE AMERICAN EXPRESS, 1961
LONG LIVE MAN, 1962
ELEGIAC FEELING AMERICAN, 1970
THE HERALD OF THE AUTOCHTHONIC SPIRIT. 1981
MINDFIELD: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, 1989
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