Gregory Corso

 

Gregory Nunzio Corso (March 26, 1930 – January 17, 2001) was an American poet, youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers (with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs).

Born Nunzio Corso, he selected the name "Gregory" as confirmation name. With the Italian community he was "Nunzio", he dealt with others as "Gregory." He often would use "Nunzio", as a short for "Annuziato", the announcing angel Gabriel, hence a poet.

Life

Corso was born at St. Vincent's hospital, (later called the Poets' hospital after Dylan Thomas died there.)

Corso’s mother, Michelina (nee) Colonna was born in Miglianico, old Puglia, Italy and emigrated to the United States at the age of nine, with her mother and four other sisters. At 16, she married Sam Corso, a first generation Italian American, and gave birth to Nunzio Corso the same year. They lived at the corner of Bleeker and MacDougal, the heart of Greenwich Village and upper Little Italy.

An Abandoned Childhood

In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, Michellina Corso abandoned Gregory at one year of age. She left him with New York Catholic Charities, and she disappeared. Corso’s father, Sam “Forunato” Corso, consistently told his son Gregory that his mother Michelina has returned to Italy and deserted the family. He was also told that she was a prostitute and was “disgraziata” (disgraced) and forced into Italian exile.

Corso self reports that he respected the Catholic Church’s heroic effort to pay foster homes to keep depression stricken families supported, with hope of reuniting them. However Corso’s own personal experience was one of isolation and disassociation. He went to Catholic parochial schools, was an altar boy, and was an extraordinarily gifted student.

Corso spent the next 11 years in over five different foster homes. His father who had remarried, rarely visited him. However in order to avoid the WWII military draft, his father brought Gregory home in 1941. The Father was drafted, and Corso was direly alone now, without even the support of the Church. He made desperate but naive efforts to locate his missing mother, but to no avail.

An Orphan of the Street

Corso became a child of the streets of Little Italy. For warmth, he slept in subways in the winter, and then slept on rooftops during the summer. He continued to attend Catholic school, not telling authorities he was living in the street. With “permission” he stole breakfast bread from Vesuvio Bakery, in Little Italy. Street food stall merchants would give him food in exchange for errands.

Troubled but Gifted Adolescence

At 13, Corso stole a toaster and sold it at a junk shop. He used the proceed to buy a tie, and dressed up to see the 1943 Biopic “The Song of Bernadette” about the mystical appearance to Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes, France, of the Virgin Mary around whom, a miracle cult had developed. 13-year-old Corso claims he was seeking a miracle, to find his mother. Instead, on returning from the movie, police were searching for him and he was arrested for petty larceny and incarcerated in “The Tombs”, New York’s infamous jail. Corso, just 13, was celled next to an adult criminally insane murderer who had stabbed his wife repeatedly with a screwdriver. The exposure left Corso massively traumatized. Neither Corso’s stepmother nor his paternal grandmother would post his $50 bail. With his own mother missing and unable to go his bail, he sat in “The Tombs.”

In 1944, during a New York blizzard, Corso broke into his tutor’s office for warmth, and fell asleep on a desk. He slept through the blizzard and was arrested for breaking and entering and booked into “The Tombs” a second time, with adults, and exposed to more horrors. Terrified of other inmates, he was sent to Bellevue hospital's psychiatric ward and later released out onto the streets of Little Italy.

Corso was again arrested in 1946, at 17, for stealing a used suit worth less than $50. A severe judge tried him, without legal representation, as an adult, a “Youthful Multiple Offender” and sentenced the 17-year-old Corso to 3 years in Clinton State Prison, New York State’s maximum-security prison. Clinton State, located in deep forrest near the Canadian Border, was reserved for New York’s most hardened criminals and was the main location of New York’s executions by electric chair.

Corso at Clinton

At Clinton, Corso fell under the protection of powerful Mafia inmates, and became something of a mascot because he was the youngest inmate in the prison. Ironically Corso was jailed in the very cell just months before vacated by Charles “Lucky” Luciano, the “father of modern organized crime” who was allowed to run his mob enterprises from his cell, in return for aiding the U.S. Military with intelligence about fascist Italy, where Luciano had extensive interests. While imprisoned, Luciano had donated an extensive library to the prison. Though there was no prison cell, Corso was encouraged by a Mafia mentor to study. Corso read after lights-out thanks, to a light specially positioned for Luciano to work late.

Corso began writing poetry in prison. He studied the Greek and Roman classics, and with a photographic memory, consumed encyclopedias and dictionaries.

Release and Return to New York City

Corso was released in 1949 and his Mafia prison mentors arranged a day laborer job for him in the Genovese family controlled garment center. By night he would write poetry.

Meeting Allen Ginsberg

Meanwhile in uptown New York City, a group of Columbia College Students, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Lucien Carr, along with an older, Harvard graduate, William S. Burroughs (still trying to find himself), envisioned themselves as writers and future literary figures.

Corso met Allen Ginsberg, in the Pony Stable Bar, one of New York's first openly lesbian bars. Corso, only 20 and recently released from prison, was supported by the women of the Pony Stable as an “artist-in-residence.” Corso was writing poetry there the night of their meeting. Ginsberg arrived, cruising bars and was immediately attracted sexually to Corso, who was straight, but understanding of homosexuality after three years in prison. "The Pony Stable was I think a dyke bar... I just wandered in and I rememberhe was sitted at a table, and he was a very nice looking kid. Alone... So I thought, was he gay or what was it? Maybe not." Ginsberg was even more struck by reading Corso's poems, immediately realizing Corso’s talent. "One he showed me...blew my mind instantly...and it struck me instantly that he was... spiritually gifted." Eventually Ginsberg introduced Corso to the rest of his inner circle - Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and others.

In their first meeting at the Pony Stable, Corso showed Ginsberg a poem about a woman who lived across the street from him, and sunbathed naked in the window. Amazingly the woman was in fact Ginsberg's girlfriend during one of his forays into heterosexuality. Ginsberg introduced the young and virginal Corso to the sunbathing woman, and in a panic, Corso ran from her apartment. Ginsberg and Corso remained life-long friends and collaborators. They were not lovers or companions.

In later years Ginsberg’s initial assessment of Corso held. During an interview (1996) for a documentary film on Corso (“Corso – the Last Beat”) Ginsberg claimed. "I think Gregory is the poet's poet. Certainly the one poet I learned from most now. Gregory, I think, in some respects is a poet superior to myself."

To Paris and the 'Beat Hotel'

In 1957, Ginsberg surprised the literary world by abandoning San Francisco and, after a spell in Morocco, he and Peter Orlovsky were led to Paris by Gregory Corso. Corso introduced them to a shabby lodging house above a bar at 9 rue Gît-le-Coeur that was to become known as the Beat Hotel. They were soon joined by William Burroughs and others. It was a productive, creative time for all of them. It was a haven for young painters, writers and black Jazz musicians. There, Ginsberg finished his epic poem "Kaddish", Corso composed "Bomb" and "Marriage", and Burroughs (with Ginsberg and Corso's help) put together "Naked Lunch", from previous writings. This period was documented by the photographer Harold Chapman, who moved in at about the same time, and took pictures constantly of the residents of the 'hotel' until it closed in 1963. Ginsberg and Orlovsky left for travels to india in 1967. Corso returned to New York in 1958. Burroughs stayed on in Europe.

Return to New York - The "Beatniks"

In late 1958, Corso reunited with Ginsberg and Orlovsky. Burroughs returned eventually. They were astonished that before they left for Europe they had sparked a social movement, which San Francisco Columnist Herb Caen call, "Beat-nik", a take off on the Yiddish term nudnik. The originals of the inner circle of Beats, could not afford to dress in decent sports clothes and resorted to army - navy surplus and work clothes. They were amazed to see young middle class people "dressing beat" - Khakis, jeans, tight black pants, torreadors, peddle pumpers, flats, beards, goatees, comprised the "Beat" wardrobe. Accoutremont were bongos, street guitars,

Columbia University Reading

Columbia recognized at least the social change that "The Beats" had unwittingly wrote and organized a welcome home reading in 1959

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:

Spirit

is Life

It flows thru

the death of me

endlessly

like a river

unafraid

of becoming

the sea

Poetry

Gregory Corso was the first of the inner circle of "The Beats" to be published His first volume of poetryThe Vestal Lady on Brattle and other poems. was published in 1952 (with the assistance of associates at Harvard, where he had been auditing classes) and quickly distributed by City Lights. This was the year before the publication of Allen Ginsberg's first collection of poetry, and six 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 notable poems are many: Bomb (a "concrete poem" formatted in typed paper slips of verse, arranged in the shape of a mushroom cloud), "Elegaic Feelings American" of the recently deceased Jack Kerouac, and Marriage, a humorous meditation on the institution. A passage from that poem:

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 ...

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

References

• Charters, Ann (ed.). The Portable Beat Reader. Penguin Books. New York. 1992. ISBN 0140151028 (hc);

Bibliography

• The Vestal Lady and Other Poems (1955)
• This Hung-Up Age (1955) (play)
• Gasoline (1958)
• Bomb (1958)
• The Happy Birthday of Death (1960)
• Minutes to Go (1960)(novel) w/ Sinclair Beiles, William S. Burroughs, and Brion Gysin.
• The American Express (1961) (novel)
• 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)

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

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